


Who Do You Think You Are?

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Series: Mind Games [2]
Category: Secret Avengers
Genre: Bobbi POV, F/M, Gen, Getting Back Together, Marvel Cameos, Memory Loss, Mother Hen Bucky Barnes, Natasha POV, On the Run, Referenced Canonical Rape, S.H.I.E.L.D., Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-12-27 16:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 66,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12084837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: Daisy and Bobbi are on the outs at S.H.I.E.L.D. They've teamed up with Bucky to keep the world safe—on their own terms. Meanwhile, Natasha is sick of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mind games, so she gets Clint out of there, and they go on the run. When the two groups meet up, they need to figure out how they can all work together, given  the secrets and unresolved issues in their past. Dealing with serious memory problems, and fed up with being other people's pawns, our heroes are taking back their lives. Do not get in their way (especially if your name is Maria Hill).Post Secret Avengers, volume 2. Diverges from canon at the very beginning of volume 3.Now complete.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the source material: It helps if you're familiar with the events of Secret Avengers v2, but I'll try to make sure all the major plot points are covered in the fic.
> 
> I love to hear from readers! Catch me in the comments section, or on Tumblr at @ootcs.

Swimming is supposed to be relaxing.

She didn’t sleep well last night, plagued by confusing nightmares and shifting memories, dreams that she's sure are memories, and vivid images that she suspects are fictional. It’s been a few weeks since she escaped from A.I.M. island, and she’s growing impatient, having expected her brain to have automatically sorted everything out on its own at this point, but Daisy and Bucky keep urging her to do relaxing activities, and, well, swimming is supposed to be relaxing.

Bobbi drapes her towel over a pool chair and snaps her goggles into place. She takes a final survey of her surroundings, lines up her feet at the edge of the pool, and dives in. Her arms cut smoothly through the water as she warms up with a slow breaststroke and settles into a routine—spreading her arms out, pushing air out through her mouth, checking the floor and walls of the pool for shadows, drawing her arms around and in, rising to the surface, taking in a breath, scanning the outside of the pool for shadows, head back in the water, arms out, air out, arms in, air in, shadow check, and repeat.

She continues this pattern, a little faster each time, until half an hour has passed, then decides the others will probably be up by now, so she does a few slow laps without letting her vigilance falter, then heads towards the ladder to return to the house.

As she prepares to climb out of the pool, she looks around and takes in the area more thoroughly, making sure it’s safe to emerge completely. She starts when she sees the figure crouching in the shadow of a nearby shrub, and her body prepares for fight, but it's just Bucky. He’s holding himself perfectly still, and must have been for the duration of her swim, since otherwise she would have noticed the movement.

“What are you doing here?” she asks as she climbs out. The water sloshes over the edge of the pool, and she pulls off her swim cap and squeezes the excess water out of her ponytail. She leaves a trail of wet footprints on the deck as she walks over, wrapping the towel around her.

“Keeping an eye out,” he responds, standing up and brushing off his pants. “You were exposed.”

She considers making a joke about her under-dressed state, not that being a superhero and spy leaves a lot of room for modesty, but the truth is that she's touched. “Got my back, Winter Soldier?” she asks with a grin.

He doesn’t say anything, but he tweaks her ponytail as she gets closer, and they head back inside together.

After two weeks in Hawaii, she's already half in love with Bucky Barnes. She suspects that Daisy is, too. How could anyone not be? He has that whole broody-intense thing going on, and that gravelly voice, plus his chest is insane and he clearly doesn't care who knows it, the way he walks around in those sleeveless shirts all day. The best part is that he's completely unattainable, so she's not even nervous around him, and she can just enjoy the endorphin rush. 

She's finally starting to understand Clint's crush on Natasha (he won't admit it, but come on), living in such close quarters with her male counterpart. The two of them, Winter Soldier and Black Widow, are so _competent_. Sure, she and Clint can hold their own, but with Bucky and Natasha, they make it all look effortless. It would be nice to be with someone with that much control and confidence, who could take the load off your shoulders.

“Last day,” Bucky says. “I was kind of getting used to not killing people.”

“That’s how vacation goes,” Bobbi responds. “The day you start getting used to it is the day you have to go back to the real world. Or so I hear.” The last time she was on vacation… she doesn’t even remember, honestly. Which isn’t saying much, because her mind still kind of feels like Swiss cheese. “I had the weirdest dream last night, about hunting Skrulls in outer space.”

“Oh, no, that actually happened,” Bucky says. It’s become a habit for her to tell her housemates the weird things that pop into her head, and for them to confirm or deny their veracity. “They, uh, kidnapped you and held you for a few years, and you escaped a few times, and…”

“Huh.” She rubs the back of her neck. “I was sure that was a dream.”

“You’d think.”

She’d prefer that this were made-up and that the road-trip-across-America-in-an-ice-cream truck dream had been real, but such is the life of a superhero, she guesses.

When they get inside, Daisy has suitcases open all over the place, with clothing hanging over every surface in sight. She’s folding clothing into piles, including their clothing, and she scowls at them as they enter. “Are you done with playtime yet? Our flight is in a matter of _hours_.”

They're flying commercial, incognito, because it's easier to blend in than flying privately, and if anyone's looking for them, it's just as likely to be the good guys as the bad ones these days. One disadvantage, though, is that they have to stick to the schedule. Still, as far as Bobbi knows, their flight is scheduled for tonight, which should leave them plenty of time.

“What’s going on?” Bobbi asks.

“Change of plans, it turns out. Fury’s original safe house turned out to be less than. He's got another place set up for us in Philadelphia, but the flight leaves at noon.”

And they need to get to the airport as early as possible, to scope it out and make sure they're not being tailed. That doesn't leave much time to shower, dress, eat, and pack.

“Fine. What's this job he's got set up for us, anyway?”

“Hard to say. It's just wild rumors so far. He's going to want you to get into an undercover A.I.M. lab in Jersey as soon as possible and grab some intel.”

“Shouldn't be a problem,” Bobbi says. “The way they’ve been so aggressive in trying to recruit me lately, I could probably just show up at the front door and they’d invite me in.”

“Hilarious.”

Bobbi takes a towel and a change of clothing from the couch and heads towards the shower.

“Daisy, did you rearrange my suitcase?” Bucky asks in the background.

“It, um, wasn’t organized.”

“It was _packed_!”

“It’s packed better now.”

“You’d better not have lost my sunglasses.”

“I moved your sunglasses to your carry-on.”

“ _God_ , Johnson.”

 

 

Bobbi hates being crowded. Tight spaces alone aren't a problem for her, but the jostling, the sounds, the feeling of a stranger's hot breath on her—it's not for her. The flights, first to LAX and then the connection to Philly, are a trial, especially because part of their disguise involves sitting separately, and right now, the guy on her left keeps sneezing, while the woman on her right is doing some work on a laptop and cannot keep her elbows to herself. It’s not her fault that the seats are designed without the concept of personal space or breathing room, but _ugh_.

In order to distract herself, Bobbi closes her eyes and plays a memory game, willing faces into her head and matching them up with what she knows about them.

 _Daisy Johnson_. Sometimes known as Quake. Mutant. No, Inhuman, formerly mistaken for a mutant. Occasionally an Avenger. Teenaged director of S.H.I.E.L.D. for, like, a week. Trained by Fury.

 _Nick Fury_. Eyepatch. Howling Commandos. She always has to fight to keep a straight face whenever she hears the word “commando.” Likes cigars, may have quit.

 _Nick Fury, Jr_. Used to be called by a different name. Works with S.H.I.E.L.D. She’s doesn't know if he’s a player or a pawn. Friends with Coulson.

 _Phil Coulson_. Knows more than he lets on. Secretly a huge Hawkeye fan. Like, huge. She’s not sure if this is true or not.

 _Clint Barton_. A grown man with hair the color of straw. Says “howling commandos” more than he needs to, because it amuses him to watch her struggle not to smile.

 _Steve Rogers_. Same hair as Clint. Her childhood hero, along with at least two-thirds of all Americans. She still wants to be him when she grows up.

 _Bucky Barnes_. Somehow simultaneously Captain America’s goofy sidekick and America’s poster bad boy. A new sex icon for a new age. He and Natasha were deeply, inspiringly in love until recently, when she was brainwashed and her memories of him were erased.

 _Natasha Romanova_. The Black Widow. Sure, there are other Black Widows, but she’s The Black Widow. The best there is at what she does, and what she does best is magnificent. Since her memories of Bucky were erased, she’s become very close with Clint, which is fine.

It hurts when she thinks about Clint, and she’s not sure why, so she avoids it. She knows the basics: arrows, ex-husband, tried dating for a while, now they’re just friends. He’s moved on. Which is what exes are supposed to do. They get along great, so there’s no reason she should feel like fire ants are eating her from the inside out whenever his image pops into her head.

 _Dominic Fortune_. Another member of the Eternal Youth club. Very flirty. Not blond. Never had a chance with her.

 _Maria Hill_.

Her head starts to pound, and she forces herself to fight through it.

 _Maria Hill_. Cares about the big picture. Does what needs to be done.

It wasn’t personal.

 _Ka-Zar_. Jungle guy. She was into that, once upon a time.

She continues this game until she’s able to block out everything else, and before she knows it, they’ve started their descent.

 

They find the key in the locker, and the car in the parking lot, as per the instructions Daisy has written down. On the way to the safe house, they go over tomorrow’s plan. She's HQ, as usual. Bobbi and Bucky will drive up in the early hours, she'll sneak in, and he'll be her eyes. She needs to stay out of sight, wait until someone leaves their station unattended, get as much data as she can, then get back to her hiding spot and sneak out without getting noticed. She makes a mental note to pick up a shitload of snacks.

They find a parking spot around the corner from the apartment, which turns out to be a walkup on the second floor, with a few bushes surrounding the building, which will be useful if they need to make any window escapes.

Daisy unlocks the door and they file inside. The entrance leads directly into a living room, with couches, two lounge chairs, and a TV at the far end, and a simple white work desk with bookcases closer to the door, next to the window. She notes the fire escape for possible future reference.

The three of them move further into the apartment and start looking around. After the living room, there’s a hallway leading to multiple bedrooms. Daisy walks in and drops her bags in the first room. The next two are another mid-sized one and a large master bedroom, with both a king-sized bed and a couch/daybed with a small table next to it.

“You take the big one,” Bucky says to Bobbi. “Large spaces make me nervous.”

She notices the sliding door, which leads to a narrow balcony that stretches along the northern edge of the building, connecting the three bedrooms. Easy to get in, easy to get out.

There’s another bedroom, smaller, right across from hers. She figures they can set it up as a gym while they're there. Fury’s set them up in the lap of luxury, comparatively.

Daisy’s voice calls out from down the hall. “Bug check!”

Bobbi sighs. “Can’t I take a nap first?”

“No, bug check is the first thing we do.”

“But if there are any bugs here, Fury was probably the one who planted them in the first place. Don’t you think he’ll be mad if we mess them up?”

“On the contrary,” Bucky says. “He’ll be proud of Daisy for being so disciplined.”

They comb the apartment down five times, beginning to end, and when they’re satisfied that they’ve gotten everything, they toss all of the listening equipment into a box which they place in the hall bathroom, under the sink.

“So do we destroy them or just lock them away?” Bobbi asks.

Daisy sticks her hand into her pocket, fishes around and pulls out a small device. “White noise generator.” She twists something on it, then drops it into the box with the bugs. “We should be good to go.”

“Glad to hear it,” Bobbi says. “Wake me up for dinner.”

She’s asleep before her head hits the pillow.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy runs her first mission since being fired from S.H.I.E.L.D., with Agents Mockingbird and Winter Soldier.

Bobbi wakes up mid-afternoon to a grumbling stomach, and when she gets to the living room, she can hear Daisy ordering pizza. Bucky is napping, stretched out on the couch, in black pants that sit low on his hips and another of those form-fitting ribbed undershirts, pecs practically bursting out the edges.

“And one vegetarian,” Daisy says into the phone. “Peppers, onions, and mushroom.”

Tearing her gaze away from the exquisite male specimen in front of her, Bobbi sinks into the empty couch and looks around. Daisy's standing in the kitchen, leaning on the marble counter of the pass-through window, her long side bangs hanging down and obscuring her face as she gives over their address. Right now, she looks like the kid she is, instead of a disgraced ex-director of an international spy organization who's had the weight of the world on her shoulders since she was fourteen. 

After hanging up, Daisy hops up and slides through the pass-through, then seats herself in a stuffed chair between the couches. “Twenty minutes,” she says. 

"Twenty minutes what?" Bucky mumbles from his couch, eyes still closed.

By the time the pizza arrives, Bucky's awake. Daisy pays the delivery guy, while Bobbi brings the boxes to the kitchen table, and the three of them dig into the pizzas like they've barely eaten anything in the past 24 hours, which is true.

“About tomorrow,” Daisy says, after they've settled in. “Keep in mind: we have all day, and blowing our cover will make the whole thing useless. Make sure you get in there before the first person shows up for work, and do not attract attention. You're looking for a very specific workstation. Don't stray from the mission parameters.”

“Got it.” Bobbi nods.

“The computers used for this project are cut off from the rest of the network, so there's not much to copy," Daisy continues. "But that's all we need. Your actual time in the open should be no more than five minutes.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Again, the specific intel we're looking for will not be so much as referenced in any of their computers aside from these two laptops whose owners bring them back and forth to work, so don't risk getting caught by wandering around early in the morning before you expect people show up.”

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “Also known as, ‘don't stray from the mission parameters.’ I _got_ it, boss. I'm a professional.”

“Okay, okay.” Daisy brushes her bangs out of her eyes and exhales.

Bobbi hands her another slice of pizza. "Relax. It'll be fine."

"Thanks," Daisy says, biting into the peace offering.

“Rest of today is free, right?” Bucky asks Daisy, and at her nod, he continues, “We should get some sparring in. Bobbi, you up for it?”

She's stiff from mostly sitting still for nearly a day. “Definitely. Just need to warm up first. Daisy?"

"I've got winners."

"I look forward to taking you both down, then." She grins.

Daisy suggests a park down the block as a location, which turns out to be perfect. It's a big space, with a playground at one end, a baseball diamond at another, and a big open grassy area surrounded by trees. Daisy sets up a blanket while Bobbi and Bucky do some dynamic stretches to warm up.

The advantage of not having superpowers or bionic extremities is that she doesn't need to pull her punches to the same extent that the others do when sparring, which is how she ends up beating both Bucky and Daisy, as promised. Afterwards, her victims face off against each other and go for a good long time, as Bobbi cheers them both on. By the end, they're just having fun, and neither one goes down. When they're finally bored, they join her on the grass, and they all watch the sun set through the trees before heading back to the apartment.

They veg out and watch television for a few hours, until Daisy turns off the TV and orders them to go to sleep, saying to Bobbi, "You don’t want to be captured and tortured because some evil scientist heard you snoring in the ceiling vents.”

“Fury will tease you mercilessly about that,” Bucky adds. “And since you’re both going to live forever, that might get annoying after a while.”

“Two-hundred-year-old Fury and Mockingbird as odd-couple roommates." Daisy laughs. "I'd watch that sitcom."

Bobbi throws a shoe at her.

 

 

After brushing her teeth and dressing down, Bobbi rolls up the throw rug in the bedroom and lays out her yoga mat. She'd never tried yoga until Hawaii, and it's very different than any other exercise she does, but she likes it. And while technically, she doesn't need a mat for these meditations, the cerulean color of the mat always cheers her up, and the squishy texture makes her toes happy.

She sits down on the mat with her legs folded, and places her hands on her thighs, palms up. Careful to be mindful of her breathing, she closes her eyes and starts to focus on each body part, one at a time. Her head—there’s a slight ache to it, which paradoxically becomes more bearable the more she allows herself to feel it. Moving on to her jaw, which she consciously relaxes, her neck, her shoulders, which she always needs to adjust, her torso, back, abdomen, pelvis, legs, and toes. She times her breath as she does this: five seconds in through the nose, five seconds out through the mouth. When she finishes, she adjusts her pose, setting her feet flat on the floor, knees up in the air, back slightly curled.

With this, she begins her kirtan kriya exercises, making the prescribed sounds, aligning her fingers using the pattern Bucky taught her. He learned the techniques when he’d first regained his memories, and he said that the daily meditations had helped his brain make sense of everything that had originally seemed overwhelming.

When she finishes, she takes a longer inhale, for a full ten seconds, and stretches up her arms. She brings her palms together and down to her chest, exhales, and opens her eyes.

The room is dim, with just a small lamp on the nightstand to add some light. She feels better, like she’s wrapped in a warm blanket and doesn’t want to move. But she has a job in a few hours, so she gets up, turns off the lamp, and crawls into bed. 

 

 

Two o’clock Eastern Time is 8 PM in Hawaii, so she has no problem waking up when her alarm goes off. She practically jumps out of bed, ready to get to work. After a quick, cold shower, she dresses in a black jumpsuit, covers it up with a sweatshirt, and heads out to the living room, where Bucky is putting on his shoes. There's a white lab coat folded up on the couch, with a brown wig laid out on top of it, so she can walk right out the front door when they finish up, and Bobbi takes them and packs them into a briefcase. Daisy is still sleeping, since she won't be needed until they're in place.

The drive to Edison is about an hour long, and they stop for snacks, as planned, so that by the time they arrive, it's almost four. Bobbi takes the bag with her equipment, and they walk around the building until they find an open window six floors up, and Bobbi takes out the suction cup scaling equipment from the briefcase, wraps two around her knees and takes two in her hands, and starts to climb.

Once she gets inside, the first step is to find the surveillance equipment and set it to loop to cover her tracks, which she does with practiced ease. When that's done, she finds the shared office of Theresa Neumann and Derek Paul, two of the scientists working on whatever this project is; seems to be some sort of biological weapon that A.I.M. has exciting plans for, based on the way Daisy talks. The door is locked, but it's easy enough to let herself into the paneled ceiling and crawl over to a more convenient location where she can see into the office from the tiny holes in the ceiling. She makes herself comfortable, and turns on her comm. 

“This is Mockingbird; I'm in,” she reports. 

Daisy's voice comes on. “Excellent. Let me know when the assets show up.”

"Asset" is used loosely, as these guys have no idea that they're—hopefully—providing the good guys with crucial information, but it works. 

While the building is empty, Bobbi and Bucky chat over the comms. Once people show up, she needs to stay quiet. The first workers show up around six: early birds who set their own hours, cleaners, and security guards. Afterwards, it's a steady trickle of voices and footsteps until around nine, which is when Neumann and Paul show up, ten minutes apart. Bobbi switches to text and lets the group know that their targets are on site. 

There are no good opportunities. They sit at their desks, some people come in to talk to them, one gets coffee or goes to the bathroom while the other analyzes data or sends emails, they go to a meeting and take their laptops with them, and after a few hours, Bobbi gets restless. She's been trying to read over their shoulders, but the screens are too far away to make anything out.

Finally, she sends out a message to Bucky: _SOS boring myself to death._

His voice comes over the comm link. “Need some entertainment?”

 _Pls_.

“Okay, I’ve got a few books here. Let me know what you want me to read to you. Uh, I have a Dark Tower book, I’m not sure which, it has a purple cover; Good Omens; Parable of the Sower, and an Archie comic book.”

She muffles her laugh with her palm, then sends back, _Let’s start with Good Omens._

"Gotcha. One second. Okay, I'm ready. You ready? If you're ready, don't say anything."

She doesn't say anything.

"In the Beginning: It was a nice day," he begins.

 

 

Hours and hours later, including a lunch break where the assets take their computers with them, he's still reading.

“So Archie and Jughead are in the Lodges’ living room, I guess, and Mr. Lodge says to Archie, ‘You need more culture in your life!’ And then Jughead says—”

She cuts him off. “They just left the room to get coffee. They're walking together. Should be passing window 32 now. Do you see them?"

"They just walked by," Bucky confirms.

"Good. I’m going in.”

Their separate coffee breaks this morning were about ten minutes each, and she's really hoping they stick to that pattern. Noiselessly, she moves the ceiling panel, grabs the frame, swings down, and replaces the panel at the exact second she lets go, dropping to the floor. After shaking the dust out of her hair and assembling her disguise, she pulls the flash drives out of her pocket and checks the computer monitors—both of these guys left their computers unlocked. It baffles her sometimes how so many well-educated scientists are so ignorant about anything computer-related that they didn't learn in a classroom. Although, to be fair, they probably didn't expect that anyone was hiding in their ceiling, waiting for the opportunity.

She plugs in the flash drives and uses the specialized software to copy the contents of the hard drives over—it's faster and more efficient than copying and pasting, leaves no trail for anyone who doesn't know exactly what to look for, and best of all, it knows how to handle a situation where the drive suddenly gets pulled out of the computer and the transfer isn't complete.

"Copy is in progress," she reports to Bucky and Daisy, looking back and forth between the two computers.

"How much time?" Daisy asks. "Winter Soldier, do you have a location on the assets?"

"I see them. They're in the kitchen."

She tunes them out, focusing on the screens in front of her, and taps her fingers on her thighs, whispering, " _Go go go go go_."

"Mock! Paul's on his way back. Fifteen seconds until the door is in his line of sight."

"How much left to go?" Daisy asks.

"Seventy three percent here, eighty five, nine--okay, done… and done! Got it, got it, leaving!” She grabs the drives, takes a quick look around the room to make sure she didn't forget anything, and strolls leisurely to the office door. She smiles at a handful of people who make eye contact with her on her way out of the building, and walks back to the car, getting into the passenger side. 

Bucky is ready to go, pulling out and driving off before she even gets her seat belt buckled. She needs a few minutes to decompress, so, after throwing the wig into the backseat, she closes her eyes and lets the first few minutes of the ride home pass in silence.

The first few minutes turns into an hour as she drifts into sleep, and the next thing she remembers, they’re back in Philly, pulling into a parking spot.

“Ugh,” she groans, “my mouth tastes like ass.”

He pops open the glove compartment, and there's a pack of Orbit that they'd picked up that morning. "Welcome back," he says.

She yawns and takes a stick of gum out of the package. “You're a lifesaver."

They get out of the car, and Bucky says, "Actually, I saw a store a few blocks over and thought I could pick up some groceries. You don't have to come, but if you want...”

“No, I'll join you.” She needs to stretch her legs anyway. Nine hours lying down in a ceiling vent makes her feel like a caged dog, especially after all the flying.

The "store" turns out to be a liquor store, and the “groceries” turns out to be beer, but she doesn't mind. She worked hard all day lying on her ass and doing nothing; she deserves some beer. 

The weather is perfect as they walk back, beers in hand. Warm, but with a slight breeze that makes it enjoyable. She has the flash drives in her pocket, a payoff of an annoying but successful mission, and she's feeling a lot better than she has in quite a while.

Her mind is wandering again, when Bucky elbows her in the side and says, “Oh, so then Jughead says, ‘The closest he gets to culture is when he eats yogurt!’”

It takes her a second to remember what he’s talking about, but when she gets it, she snorts out loud, in very undignified way. “That's awful. Awful. Did they have Archie when you were a kid?”

“It started when comics became really big, around the beginning of the war,” he says. “But I didn't read them at the time.”

They're at the building now, and he reaches into his pocket for a key, then opens the door and holds it for her.

“Thanks. So when did you read your first Archie, then?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that Luke and Jessica have a whole collection? They each deny that it came from them, so either one of them is a liar or they both are.”

“Ha. Or it came from Danny.”

They've reached the door, and Bobbi uses her own key to unlock it and open the door. She freezes when she hears the voice of Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow, saying, “...was a bullshit deal and you know it, Johnson. You have to fix him.”

Bobbi and Bucky exchange speculative glances. They walk into the apartment, and the voices go silent, as Daisy, Natasha, and her own ex-husband turn to look at them.

“Bobbi?” Clint says, the surprise evident on his face. “What are _you_ doing here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be getting out of Bobbi's head for a bit. Next chapter is Natasha POV.


	3. Chapter Three

ONE WEEK EARLIER

The issue has been weighing pretty heavily on her mind recently, and she's come to a decision.

Natasha waits for the helicarrier to take off, the noise of the engine providing some noise cover in case they're being eavesdropped upon, before she turns to Jessica. “Listen,” she says. “I need you to help me get Clint off the team.” 

“What?" Jess scrunches up her face, frowning through her mask. "How petty do you think I am?”

“What?”

“Wait, why do you want him off the team?” Jess asks.

“Because he doesn't want to be here.”

Jess quirks an eyebrow. "Where did you get that from? He seems fine to me.”

They're interrupted by the whizzing of a bullet just between them—Natasha drops to the ground, and Jessica attaches herself to a nearby wall, and they start to return fire.

“That's because he doesn't remember," Natasha shouts over the sounds of gunfire. They take out whoever's aiming for them, but she stays sitting on the ground, and Jess joins her behind the rock they're using for cover, and she continues, "This isn't his first stint on the team. He was with us before you joined, but when he quit, they wiped all traces of it from his mind. And the second it became convenient for S.H.I.E.L.D., they brought him back, disregarding the fact that he quit before because, well, because Hill is…let's just say she doesn't act like the Avengers would in all situations.” It seems like she's being diplomatic to protect S.H.I.E.L.D., but she thinks Jess might be less sympathetic if she were to know the exact details of what turned Clint away from the Secret Avengers.

Maybe she's being uncharitable. If Jess asks, she'll tell her, she decides. She's not Hill. 

Natasha turns to her and continues, “Hill acted as if she accepted his resignation, but what good is that if she makes him forget it and just signs him back up?”

“Okay, so why not just tell him?”

“And then what? He quits again, making a bigger scene this time? And joins again with a clean slate in another few weeks? And then I get my mind wiped, too? I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible these days.”

Her friend tilts her head at her, and she feels like she's said too much. "Does that mean you're leaving, too?"

Natasha nods. "It's time."

"Oh." Jess looks at her sorrowfully, like they're never going to see each other again, and puts her arms around her. "Well, it was fun while it lasted."

She hugs back, realizing that this will leave Jess as the only actual Avenger on the Secret Avengers, and Natasha feels almost guilty. "Do you want to come with me?" she asks.

"No, I… I like this team, actually. It's good for me, I think." Jess peeks her head over the rock, then turns back to her. "I think the coast is clear. So what's your plan?"

They both look again, then nod at each other and stand up. Natasha says, “I'm just going to run. After the mission, assuming everything goes as planned, I’m not coming back.”

“What can I do?” Jess asks.

"Just… stall," Natasha tells her. 

 

 

Once she gets to New York, the first thing she does is call Nick Fury Sr. and beg for his help. Hill said she'd look for Bobbi, but Hill's worn out her credit with Natasha, all of these "hard decisions" made in the name of the "greater good." Natasha's had it with the greater good lately, sick of people missing the trees for the forest, of good people being sacrificed to prevent bad PR. It's not as if Fury has never let her down, either, but he—he gives, in addition to all that he takes, especially to the people he feels responsible for. Fury doesn't say no to her very often.

But after all that, it turns out she doesn't need to go looking for Bobbi, because Bobbi is fine, which is something that Fury knows somehow. He won't tell her how he knows, but he knows.

Item number one, crossed off the list. 

Next, she gets a car. This is harder than it sounds, since S.H.I.E.L.D. knows all of her fake identities, and she's much too proud to go to Fury with every single one of her problems. She really doesn't want to start a big Avengers versus S.H.I.E.L.D. war, either, so no high-profile Avengers. After racking her brain for people who would do her a favor, no questions asked, on the one hand, but whom S.H.I.E.L.D. would never think to associate her with, on the other, she comes up with Angela Del Toro, sometimes known as the White Tiger, and makes a phone call.

 

 

So, apparently Angela's evil now. She has _got_ to get better about staying in touch. 

She considers Songbird for a second, but the fact that Melissa's been affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past makes Natasha wary. No go.

Frustrated, she realizes that it'll have to be Matt. His ties to her are hardly a secret, but he has a healthy mistrust of authority and can keep a secret better than anyone—if S.H.I.E.L.D. tortures him, which she doesn't really expect them to do, he'll laugh in their faces and ask for more. Sure, he's in San Francisco now, but he has his contacts. 

This is how she ends up with a gold Prius rented out by one Dakota North. Dakota is professional and helpful, and she doesn't ask any questions. Natasha likes her. She even goes above and beyond by lending Natasha her driver's license—okay, they don't exactly look alike, but most people don't look past the long red hair.

She sends Hill a resignation letter in the mail, wraps it up in an envelope with a stamp and drops it off in a blue mailbox and everything. It goes a little something like this: Dear Maria, I quit, so does Hawkeye, don't call us, don't try to find us, we won't expose your secrets if you keep away, and don't even think about trying to call my bluff. XOXO, Natalia.

Then she goes to Brooklyn.

 

 

“What? What are you _talking_ about?” Clint asks. Then he apparently reconsiders, and steps to the side, waving her in. “Come inside, my neighbors can be nosy.”

She steps into the apartment, and he closes the door behind her. "Who would try and erase _my_ mind? I'm no Wolverine."

“I know it sounds crazy, but you have to take my word for it,” Natasha says. “Listen, do you have missing pieces lately? Like, memories of spending hours at the gym, but if I pressed you—okay, you were at the gym for five hours last Friday, right?”

“Yeah, how did you—“

“Five hours at the gym, Clint?" She raises an eyebrow. "Tell me, what exercises did you do? How much did you lift? Which area did you target? Did you listen to music? What songs? How many minutes did you spend on the treadmill? Were you sore the next day?”

Clint pinches the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb and shakes his head. “I don't… I don't remember." His eyes widen. "Nat, what did they…?"

“I told you. Now go pack a bag.”

 

 

“I would never agree to that,” Clint says for the thousandth time. They're on the I-95, in her borrowed car, windows up with the air conditioner on, no radio.

She moves into the left lane. “I'm sure that’s what everyone says at first."

“ _You_ would never agree to that.”

“And yet, we both did.”

“Why?”

“We don’t remember.”

“That’s… that’s cheating," he sputters, turning his whole body towards her and beginning to gesticulate as he talks. "How do we know we did agree to it? Maybe we refused, and they wiped our minds, and told us that we agreed?”

She keeps her voice even and avoids looking at him. “We remember agreeing, just not why. Well, _I_ remember, anyway—and when they call you in, you do, too.”

“Still. Maybe they blackmailed us.”

“Maybe,” she says noncommittally. There was no blackmail involved, she knows that much, but she doesn't want to get into it right now.

“Where are we going?”

“Connecticut. Safe house.” Really, she does want to be helpful, but she has no patience for all these questions. Although, to be fair, it’s not his fault that he doesn’t know anything.

"'K." He starts tapping his fingers on his thighs, then stops when she turns a glare on him. That must have given her away, because he stays silent for the rest of the trip. 

 

 

She pulls up at a cabin in the woods, pulls into the garage and parks. “We can stay here as long as we need. No one knows about this place.”

“You sure?” he asks, as they get out. He’s talking about the Winter Soldier, of course.

“No,” she admits, annoyed. She has no idea whether she would have told Barnes about this safe house. She doesn’t know what their relationship was—colleagues or friends with benefits, casually dating, serious, married… could be anything. All she knows is that they had some sort of relationship before Leo Novokov, an old associate of his from his Soviet days, decided to play Jenga with her mind.

“Don’t worry about it. He’d never betray you,” Clint rushes to reassure her, misunderstanding the cause of her irritation.

Her instinct kicks in. “Please don’t tell me about my past.” She's being short with him; she hates that she's being short with him when he's just trying to help.

"Fine." He puts his hands up in the air, backing off.

They head inside. The cabin has one bedroom and a sofa bed, with a barebones kitchen that has some food in the freezer and cans and crackers in the pantry. It's not fancy, but it'll do for a few days. 

"So, here we are," Clint says. "Are we fugitives now?"

"That's ridiculous. We haven't broken any laws." They may have violated their contract with S.H.I.E.L.D., though. Except that there was no contract, just an underhanded handshake that sealed their fates.

He sighs and puts his hand on her shoulder, so that she's forced to look him in the face. "Nat, talk to me. Please. What are we doing here? What's the plan?"

She sits down on the couch and motions for him to follow. "I'm sorry. I've been completely in my head trying to plan this out. What we need to do is to find Daisy Johnson. She was—temporarily—the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the reason she was fired has to do with the Secret Avengers."

Clint makes a scoffing sound. "Don't call it the Secret Avengers. I was _on_ the Secret Avengers—I _led_ the Secret Avengers, and whatever you're describing… that's not it."

"Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. took the name when you stopped using it."

"Gotta love 'em. So Daisy, is she on our side?"

"Hard to say, but she's one of Fury's, so she's resourceful. And resources are what we need."

Clint nods. "Okay. How do we find her?"

Natasha hates saying it, but, "We call up Fury and beg for his help."

"You mean, _you_ call up Fury and beg for his help."

Natasha shrugs, a yes.

"Fine. I'll find something to do to keep busy. I'll go...find some crime happening outside that I can stop."

"Clint, we're in the middle of the woods."

"Haven't you ever seen a horror movie? Anyway, I've gotta get out, you know I can't be cooped up like this."

She thinks he's joking, but can't tell for sure. She's never really gotten the hang of the whole 'banter' thing. "Fine." She sighs. "Go out, save the ducks from the heroin-dealing foxes."

"Fine, I will."

 

 

He comes back ten minutes later, soaked to the bone, while she's on the phone with Fury Sr., arguing him down. “I know you know where she is, and you know perfectly well that I can cover my tracks, and, furthermore, you know exactly why I'm looking for her and why I won't stop looking, so you might as well tell me before I start making noise."

 _It's raining,_ Clint mouths, entirely unnecessarily. 

She nods.

"Nick," she says into the phone, "if you ever respected me at all, you will tell me how to find her.”

 _How’s it going?_ Clint mouths, again.

Natasha gives him a thumbs up.

“I’ll get back to you,” Fury says, and disconnects. She swivels her thumb until it’s pointing down.

“No dice?” Clint asks.

“We’ll see. Hopefully, he’ll come through. I have no other leads.”

It takes two more rainy, cooped-up days for Fury to get back to her with an address, but he comes through in the end, assures her that she'll find Daisy there. She resists the urge to look it up on the internet or even any more secure systems, knowing that it could get traced back to her, and if Daisy's on the run, Natasha's not going to be the reason she gets caught.

 

 

It takes all she has not to go ninety on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. It wouldn't do to get a speeding ticket under someone else's name.

"So tell me more about this S.H.I.E.L.D. Avengers team," Clint says. "Who else is on it? What do we do?"

She side-eyes him. "Secret Avengers. And you know I'm not going to do that."

" _Not_ the Secret Avengers, and you've got to give me _something_."

"All right. You won't be surprised to hear that Coulson leads the team. We tangled with A.I.M. a lot. There was recently a team overhaul—a few members left, some new ones joined. That's really all I can tell you."

"And you think that when we find Daisy, she'll undo whatever it is she did to begin with, and I'll remember the rest?"

"She'd better."

 

 

"So do we just… knock?"

"Well, we could break in."

"Not if we want to get on her good side."

"If we knock, she might bolt."

"If we break in, she might—"

The door swings open, and Daisy Johnson is standing there, wearing noise-canceling headphones and holding out her hand in warning like she's getting ready to turn their internal organs into juice. "Don't come any closer."

"We're not with S.H.I.E.L.D.," Natasha says immediately. She makes sure to enunciate, so that Daisy can read her lips.

"Please, like I'm going to fall for—" Daisy starts, keeping her arm ready to attack.

Natasha interrupts. "I'm sure you heard what Hill did right after she kicked you out. Do you think this one," she jerks her shoulder in Clint's direction, "is going to go and do her dirty work after that?"

Daisy pauses, almost lets down her guard. Then she looks at Clint's face, and something in it must give it away, because she raises her arms again, and says, "He doesn't remember. _Don't_ play with me."

"I'm _not_. We're here for your help."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because I _do_ remember."

Daisy snorts. "What's it to you? You're S.H.I.E.L.D."

Natasha crosses her arms. "And what does that make you?"

"Will you two stop this already?" Clint bursts out. "Daisy, come on. I'm not S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm an Avenger, and I'm certainly no assassin. Will you please let us in?"

Finally, Daisy relents. She pulls them both inside and locks the door behind them, then walks over to a coffee table a few feet away and sets the headphones down.

Clint takes a seat without being invited to do so, and puts his feet on the coffee table. "I really wish someone would fill me in on all these context clues that I'm missing."

"Well, that's why we're here," Natasha says. "So she can give you your memories back."

"Hold on a second. Who says that 'she' has the ability to give him his memories back?" Daisy retorts, shoving at Clint's legs so that he's forced to put his feet down.

Natasha's not in the mood. “Don't play helpless with me. If you didn't have a fix for this, you'd be a vegetable yourself right now. And you owe us this. It was a bullshit deal and you know it, Johnson. You have to fix him.”

She hears the front door opening, and the conversation stops immediately, as Bobbi herself enters the apartment, followed by Bucky Barnes.

“Bobbi?” Clint says. “What are _you_ doing here?”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The intragroup dynamics may be a little shaky, what with everyone hiding secrets from one another, but they're just going to have to learn how to get along.

Natasha isn’t surprised to see Bobbi, especially given the size of the apartment, which is much too big for just one person on the run. Fury did assure her that Mockingbird was safe, and in Fury’s mind, "safe" means "under his personal protection." She would never have expected Barnes, though, so in the end, she’s caught unaware just as much as Clint is.

"What am I _doing_ here?" Bobbi repeats, almost incredulously. She slams the door shut and walks determinedly over to them, sticking a finger in his face. "It’s good to see you, too, asshole, how about—"

The last thing they need is a superhero showdown, so Natasha interrupts before things can go any further. "Wait. Stop, okay? Let's start from the beginning. The reason that we are in your apartment is because Clint has some memory issues, and we think that Daisy can help him." She doesn't emphasize the words _memory issues_ , but she trusts Bobbi to get the hint.

Bobbi narrows her eyes, and Natasha gives her a meaningful look. Bobbi tilts her head, and Natasha answers by raising an eyebrow and nodding. Finally, Bobbi casually brings her hand down to her side, dusts it off on her pants, and says, "Right. Who wants a beer?"

The tension is broken, and they sit around the couches and pass around the bottles while Clint starts to explain. "So we're in this strange secret S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Avengers' group that answers to Maria Hill, and they wipe our minds after every mission, and Nat wanted out. Um, I'm kind of in between missions right now, and she's AWOL, I guess—"

"Resigned, both of us," Natasha corrects. 

"Resigned, but I—can you actually resign on someone else's behalf? I'm not sure that counts. Anyway, because I _was_ in between missions, I don't actually remember any of this stuff, and Nat thinks that Daisy can help bring back my memories, because of her S.H.I.E.L.D. history, so here we are."

Natasha can feel the three of them examining her face as Clint speaks, trying to figure out how much she actually knows and what her full motivations are. It's no problem for her to keep her expression impassive, but she knows she won't be able to hang on to her secrets for too long, not with this crowd.

Natasha continues, "I sent in a letter of resignation on both of our behalfs after I got out of there, and I’m hoping that Hill is reasonable enough not to go after me, but we all know she's not exactly the trusting sort."

"Why go through all this trouble?" Barnes asks. "Why not just walk out the front door?"

She doesn't want to reveal the real reason, not until Clint remembers it himself, so she gives a partial answer. "She’d wipe our minds on the way out, and I'm not okay with that anymore. The things that we did as Secret Avengers are part of what makes us the people we are, but when they erase our memories of those things, they're reducing us to tools. It's not right."

"And yet, you agreed to it," he retorts, folding his arms.

She meets his stare head-on without answering. Finally, she turns to Daisy. "I know that you can help us. Will you?"

"I’m glad you have so much confidence in me, but... I'm still not sure it's that easy. I have to reach out and talk to some people—discreetly, of course—to see what can be done. In the meantime, should we make up two more beds?"

Bobbi speaks up. "We’ve got that extra bedroom—oh, that smug bastard; he changed our safe house because he knew the two of you were coming, didn’t he?"

"Looks like it," Daisy says.

"Well, Nat can have the bedroom," Clint offers. "I’ll take the couch."

"I've got room for two," Bobbi says. Everyone looks at her, and she clarifies, "I mean that Natasha can stay with me." Clint looks amused, and Bobbi’s cheeks are pink. "Oh, shut up," she snaps at him. Then, to Natasha, "If you don’t mind. There's a daybed."

"That’s fine."

"Great. Oh! Daisy. Um, here you go." She fishes into her pocket and pulls out what looks like two thumb drives, handing them to Daisy. 

"Good work," Daisy says. "I'll go see what I can do with it now, if everyone is good out here. Romanoff, Barton, we'll continue this conversation in the morning." It's an order, not a request, and while Daisy isn't in the position to give orders to anyone right now, it's progress, so Natasha accepts it. Daisy grabs two bottles of beer and heads towards the hallway. 

"You're not old enough to drink those!" Clint calls after her.

"Drinking age is eighteen in Attilan," Daisy shoots back, heading into the bedroom across the hall and shutting the door behind her. 

"I thought she was a mutant," Bobbi says, once she's gone.

Clint draws his eyebrows together. "What _is_ the drinking age in Attilan?"

 

 

Tabling the drinking age in Attilan (and its relevance for Level Ten S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives on U.S. soil) for the time being, Bobbi says, "Let's get you guys set up before we forget." She leads them to her bedroom, and opens a closet full of linens. She pulls out one set of sheets and a pillow for Natasha and hands it to her. Then she gets a second set. "Follow me," she says to Clint.

She shows him across the hall to his room, dropping the pile on the desk next to his bed and looks the room over. It's a little smaller than the other ones, like it's an afterthought compared with the rest of the place. "I haven't actually been in here yet. Thought we wouldn't need it." She starts making the bed without thinking about it. 

"Hey, I can do that," he says, putting his beer down on the desk next to the bed and taking the sheet from her, their arms brushing.

"Oh, yeah." She hands it over. "Force of habit."

He smirks, a _knowing_ sparkle in his blue eyes. "Your habit when you have me alone in a bedroom is to make the bed?"

She's suddenly very aware of their proximity, as the fine hairs on her upper arms stand on end. She doubles down and leans in even closer, placing her fingers on the neck of his t-shirt, a breath away from his skin, and whispering, "What can I say, Barton? I get real close to you and _all_ I can think about is falling asleep."

He holds up a finger and wags it at her. "You watch yourself."

She winks. "I'll be sure to do that." She leaves him setting up the bedspread and goes back into her room. Natasha is making her own bed, so Bobbi heads out to the balcony, where she saw Bucky disappear to a few minutes ago, and slides the door shut behind her. 

She finds him leaning against the building's outer wall and looking out at the view—which isn't much to write home about, just a bunch of buildings across the street, but there's more sky above the buildings than in New York, which makes it look nicer.

"You're never going to win her back by moping in the corner, sport."

"Who said anything about winning her back?" Bucky says, without looking at her.

"I did, just now. Didn't you hear me?"

He doesn't answer right away, but when he does, he sounds morose. "Look at me, I'm a monster. I couldn't win back a yo-yo."

"A yo-yo?"

"Yeah, because they…" Bucky flicks his wrist, simulating a yo-yo dropping and bouncing back.

She positively cackles. "Oh my God. That's so awful it's amazing. But honestly, you're blind if you think that you couldn't get anyone you wanted. ‘ _Look at me._ ’ You're funny. A funny heartthrob. If I weren't such a mess myself, and you weren't in love with someone else, I'd go for it."

"Really."

"You're joking, right?" It's inconceivable to her that a man so gorgeous can be so unaware of it. Being kept on ice all those years might have had something to do with it, and then the whole famed-assassin long-term girlfriend thing might have kept some of the flirting at bay, but surely he's had some exposure to… she doesn't know, _mirrors_ , or something.

He looks unconvinced. "I have a _metal arm_."

"If you don't know yet that's a turn on, I don't know what to tell you."

He blushes as his gaze flickers over, just for a second, to the bedroom, where Natasha is finishing up her sheets. Somehow, the look puts her mind at ease.

She sees through the sliding door that Clint has finished up his own room, and is now sitting on her bed. They're talking, which makes her kind of wish she'd left her own listening devices around. She turns back to Bucky. 

"Now, repeat after me: 'I, Bucky Barnes, am a freaking catch.'"

 

 

"You think this is going to work out?" Clint asks.

She's determined that it will. "Daisy's got something, we just need to convince her to share."

He nods. "Hope so. Hey, what do you think their deal is?" He tilts his head in the direction of the glass door, where they can see Bobbi and Barnes chatting.

It makes sense to her, though she can't say it out loud to Clint, that Bobbi would have met up with Daisy after escaping A.I.M., but she hasn't yet figured out what Barnes's connection is. "Bobbi and Daisy are both loyal to Fury, so I'm betting he has something to do with their working together. As far as Barnes goes, your guess is probably better than mine." 

He's still watching them, and she realizes that she may have originally understood the question the wrong way. There's a tightness around his eyes, like he wants to go over and interrupt, but he's holding himself back, because… well, she can't really explain why he's holding himself back. On the other side of the door, Bobbi's body language says that she can feel his eyes on her but is pretending not to notice. Then Bobbi says something that makes Barnes laugh, and Clint grips the bottle in his hand so hard his knuckles turn white. 

Natasha likes Bobbi and Clint on both a personal and a professional level, but the unsettled nature of the relationship between those two is starting to get on her nerves. It's not good for either of them to be in this in-between place, not good for anyone to be in this kind of limbo. She knows a thing or two about exes you still love, but it's different with her and Matt, although it took them both a long time to accept it.

What's curious is her own lack of feeling about the scene in front of her. In theory, she should have some sort of reaction—some sort of territorial jealousy, but it's not there. Objectively, Bucky Barnes is a very handsome man, and she enjoys his company, but… nothing. It's very strange, how thoroughly this supposed romance has been scooped out of her.

 

 

"I should probably mention, she knows that there was something between you," Bobbi says.

Something in his eyes transforms instantly, snapping him out of his rut. "She _remembers_?"

"No," she hastily corrects, "sorry, I didn't mean to—she just kind of figured it out from context. She won't let us tell her any details, though, because she doesn't want to know her history through other people's eyes."

"Well. That's Natasha for you."

"I'm just saying, it wouldn't come out of left field if you made a move," she says. 

He sighs. "It wouldn't be fair, not with everything so off-balance. Unless she knew the whole story, I couldn't."

"So, you're joining a monastery, is that it?" 

"Hey, this is a fun conversation. I'm having fun." Bucky makes a face that says he is not having fun. "Anyway, what about you and _your_ ex over there?"

"Ha." She gives him a wry smile. "You see, Bucky Barnes, there are two types of exes: there's the type where one half of the couple gets brainwashed into forgetting the other's existence... and then, you know, there's the other type. Where the words 'I don't think we should be together' were actually uttered."

He clicks his tongue sympathetically. "I guess it wasn't mutual?"

"I don't know," she says, "it was and it wasn't. At the time, I thought it was just going to be… you weren't around back then, but when our marriage fell apart the first time, there was a lot of on and off and off and on again. He was my 'estranged husband,' I was his 'estranged wife.' But now it's different—now we're exes, in the eyes of the state. And that's it. I have my own life, and he has his. We're still… we're still _something_ , I guess, but a platonic something."

"So you're not interested."

"This is a fun conversation," she quotes at him. And then, just to torture herself—and him—a little more, she adds, "Hey, so maybe the two of them will hook up. Wouldn't that be wild?"

"Yeah. Wild."

"Hey, chin up," Bobbi says. "At least we have our health!"

"To our health." He holds up his beer.

"Cheers." She clinks it.

At that point, the door slides open, and the other two come out.

"Stop talking about us," Natasha says dryly as they approach. 

"But then what would we talk about?" Bobbi quips back. "Welcome to the deck. We're just enjoying the twilight out here. How are the two of you finding your accommodations?"

"Never better," Clint says. "I think Fury's finally found his calling."

She grins. "Nick Fury, Agent of A.I.R.B.N.B.?"

Bucky raises his bottle, again. "I'll drink to that."

 

 

They spend hours outside getting pleasantly buzzed and looking out at the city lights, before heading to their rooms. After showering and getting ready for bed, Natasha gets comfortable under a fluffy blanket (Fury really does have an unexpected talent for this) and prepares to sink into sleep. She's halfway there when Bobbi pipes up. 

"So, I have to ask."

God, the two of them with their questions. When they were married, they must have talked each other to death. 

"If you're technically on a mission, you remember everything, don't you?" Bobbi asks.

Okay, fair, this is a deserved question. Natasha sits up, forcing herself awake. "Yes," Natasha says. "And I—well, Fury told me you'd made it out, but I'm glad to see you with my own two eyes. Are you okay? You were a little… wonky, last time I saw you."

"I'm recovering. I've been doing these mind exercises, and they seem to be helping. Either that, or the placebo effect is helping, but whatever gets results, right?"

They're quiet for a few more minutes, until Bobbi speaks up again, her voice floating over in the darkness, sounding more hesitant this time. "Why did you wait until Clint was off assignment to leave? Did you… did he want to stay?"

"Not exactly," Natasha says. She's so used to keeping secrets for secrets' sake, but in this instance, there's no reason for her not to tell Bobbi the whole truth, so that's what she does. "Actually, he quit the team after your last mission, and they erased the whole Secret Avengers experience from his memory entirely. Later on, he was with me when the next emergency came up, so Hill just added him back to the roster. Even when he's on, he doesn't remember."

Bobbi huffs. "Well, that's rich."

Natasha takes the opportunity to ask a question of her own. "How did you and Daisy join up with Barnes? What's his part in all this?"

"Honestly, I don't know. They met up before I escaped. I think Daisy had the idea to keep tabs on S.H.I.E.L.D. and wanted someone she knew she could trust, and she picked him because—well, you know."

Because he would never betray her, like Clint said. Okay, time to stop asking questions. "Never mind, I shouldn't have asked."

"It's okay. You can."

"I just—"

"Don't want to be influenced by other people's perspectives of your missing memories, I know. 'Night, Nat."

 

 

Natasha wakes up early on purpose and finds Daisy in the kitchen, pouring Cheerios into a bowl. She turns around as Natasha approaches. "Good morning."

"Good morning."

Daisy opens up a cabinet with bowls, and Natasha takes one. She takes some cereal for herself, and gets milk from the fridge. Daisy gets two spoons out of a drawer, and they both sit down at the table to eat.

And to talk business, if Natasha has anything to say about it.

"So, talk to me," she says.

"Wouldn't you prefer to wait until Barton is up, so that I can talk to you both at the same time?"

"Actually, no." Natasha jumps right in. "How do you reverse the memory loss?"

"It's not that simple."

" _Daisy_." She's starting to lose patience.

Daisy holds up a hand. "I didn't say it can't be done. I actually know exactly how it can be done. See, Stark has this old lab with a whole bunch of brain toys, which happens to be where the nanobots used by S.H.I.E.L.D. to erase our memories were originally developed. He also has the first prototype, which is this big machine that basically does the same thing, wiping down memories. Since the technology was intended to cut out parts of your mind in case you were captured and tortured, the original intention was to put everything back afterwards, and the same machine has an 'unlock' function. Theoretically, it should work on Barton."

Natasha nods, waiting for the _but_.

"The problem is this: The nanobots—and this wasn't part of the original design—transmit a signal, and when they see that they're being tampered with, it sends an alert to S.H.I.E.L.D., which I didn't know about until I tried it on myself. They're able to, I don't know, forcibly change the state of the nanobots or something which will crash the process. I took them by surprise when I did it to myself, so I managed to recover enough, but they've probably automated it by now."

"Wow." Natasha shakes her head. "I don't know whether to be disgusted or impressed."

"Tell me about it."

Natasha stands up, puts her bowl and dishes in the sink, and turns around, thinking. The puzzle pieces fit perfectly together, if only she can convince its creator to use them. "I actually have an idea about how to get around that. I just need to go out for a bit to take care of it."

"Really? That would be extraordinarily convenient."

"Just do me a favor and don't mention this to anyone else until I get back. I'll tell you when I know for sure."

She walks out to the living room, puts on her boots, grabs her borrowed car keys from the shelf next to the door, and gives the room one last look over.

"Romanoff," Daisy says, as Natasha turns towards the door.

"Yeah."

"I argued for you not to get the memory implants, if it makes a difference. I was... overruled."

"Hill didn’t trust me, eh?"

Daisy doesn't answer.

Natasha opens the door and flips her head around, not bothering to hide her grin. "In her defense… she was right."

 

 

When Bobbi leaves the bedroom the next morning, the first thing she notices is the dartboard set up on the wall right next to the door. It's the same one from his apartment, the same exact style that he replaces every few months. He changes his costume style more often than he changes his dartboard model. She touches the fiber, gets lost in the pattern of the holes for a few seconds. He's going to need to replace this one soon.

The door opens, and she drops her hand to her side, as Clint walks out of his bedroom in a T-shirt and boxer briefs. His hair is matted, and his eyes half-closed. "'Morning," he grunts.

"Hey," she says in response.

"Bathroom."

She holds out her arm for him to pass, and watches as he walks down the hall. He looks good from the back; that's never stopped being true.

In the kitchen, Daisy is leaning over in front of her laptop, which she closes as Bobbi walks up.

"Hey," Bobbi greets her. "Where's Natasha?"

"She's out doing her own thing," Daisy answers. "Seems like she'll be gone all day. Bucky's up, too; working out in his room, I think. I want to talk to Clint about the memory retrieval, and you should probably be here for it."

Bobbi shrugs and takes a breakfast bar from the box on the counter. "Got nowhere else to go."

Ten minutes later, Clint emerges from the bathroom, showered and dressed. He walks right by them and leans over the coffeepot, inhaling deeply.

"Cups?" he asks.

Daisy points to the cupboard behind him. He opens the cabinet, takes out a plain white mug, and pours himself some coffee, which he then swallows in one gulp. "Okay, I'm up. What's up, fellow outlaws?" he says cheerfully as he pours himself a second cup.

"Daisy wants to tell you her plan for your brain," Bobbi says.

"Put it in a jar and prod it?"

"Nah, that's my specialty. She's more likely to replace it with a few pieces of silicon."

Daisy rolls her eyes, and Clint elbows Bobbi. "Shhh, no talking, we'll get detention."

They gather round the table, and Daisy starts to explain, mostly talking to Clint. "Here's the story. When new recruits sign on to the Secret Avengers, they're infected, so to speak, with nanobots that give a select few people the power to alter and erase their memories using a trigger word. Some of the memories are restored when you get called in, but only the ones that S.H.I.E.L.D. considers necessary for you to function as an agent. You with me so far?"

Clint nods.

"Good. Now what does this mean for us? It means that the memories _can_ be unlocked. If you have the encryption key. Which we do, because the nanobots are based on technology developed by Tony Stark, and we have access to some earlier versions of the same technology."

"Earlier versions?" Clint repeats. "Like… a first draft?"

"More like a fully-functional first release without the extra features."

"How exactly do we have access to this?" asks Bobbi. "Is Iron Man going to unlock the door for us?"

"I don't want to involve Stark directly in this. He wouldn't be happy if he knew what S.H.I.E.L.D.'s done with his work, and it would look bad for him to publicly oppose them. Also, I don't really like him."

Clint lets out a burst of surprised laughter.

"But I do have a way in. I'm waiting for a few answers, but as soon as I hear back, and as soon as you're ready, we'll go."

"Okay." He takes a deep breath. "This is all a little overwhelming. I have—I have _no idea_ what to expect."

Bobbi speaks up. "You know, I also had my memories tampered with recently. Getting them back can be...disorienting, to say the least. And you might not be happy with what you find out."

"What do you mean, you had your memories tampered with?" Clint sits up straight and turns to her, looking alarmed. "Who tampered with your memories?"

"That’s not the point." He gives her a look, and she gives in. "Okay, okay, it was A.I.M. Remember when we worked together on that W.C.A. mission, and Rappaccini dropped a building on your head and then tried to get me to join up? So, they don't like taking no for an answer. I’m okay now, but my point is that you need to prepare yourself for finding out some potentially upsetting things."

"What potentially upsetting things?"

"Well," Bobbi says, "there must have been a reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. erased your memories—not that I’m defending it. It’s gotta be something heavy."

Clint shakes his head. "A.I.M. and S.H.I.E.L.D., using the same techniques… whoever would have seen that coming, huh?"

They both turn to Daisy, who frowns. "I’m sorry, I really am. It was a bad idea and I never should have gone along with it."

"Gone along with it!" Clint exclaims. "You were the _director_."

"And Hill was more experienced. I thought she knew what she was doing."

"Oh, she knew," Bobbi mutters.

Clint gives her a strange look.

"I mean—"

"What you mean is, there's something in my missing memories that everyone knows and no one is telling me. And it has to do with you." 

She doesn't want to _lie_ to him. "Well, you know what Natasha says about other people's lost memories."

"Don't tell me you're on _her_ side," he says, looking put out.

"I'm—" She blinks, and all of a sudden it hits her, the weight of what they're keeping from him. It's been so easy and fun since he and Natasha showed up, just hanging out with old friends and not worrying about anything except for who has a stupid crush on whom, and that's all going to change once he _knows_. Oh, it's going to be awkward and horrible, and she's starting to have second thoughts.

Daisy gives her a concerned look, then says to Clint, "Don't worry too much about it. Whatever memories get dragged up, the important thing is that they're all in the past." She pauses, then says, "You don't have to go through with this. I know that Agent Romanoff went through a lot of trouble to go under the radar, but that was her choice and this is a decision that you have to make for yourself. If you want to take the blue pill, that's perfectly fine."

He swallows, glances at Bobbi, and then turns back to Daisy with a resolute look on his face. "No, I do," he says. "I want to recover my memories. Whatever it brings."

 

 

It takes a bit of finagling to get an appointment for today, with his busy schedule all over the world, but fortunately it turns out that Tony Stark will be in New York this afternoon. The A.I. version of him she books the meeting with agrees to keep it all under wraps, but hanging out at Stark Tower, disguise or no disguise, is a bad idea, so Natasha hops on a train uptown and wanders around the park for a few hours until it's time for the meeting.

Tony's already there by the time she arrives, which is a nice touch. He pours two glasses of water at a side table and hands her one, which she thanks him for and then puts down. She's not here for water.

She explains what she needs, without giving any details of who it’s for or why it’s necessary, finishing up with, "I haven't told anyone, just like I promised, but you know I wouldn’t be asking you for this if it weren’t important."

He starts pacing back and forth. "Natasha. Please don’t put me in the position of having to say no to you."

"Don’t say no," she says, standing up and leaning against his desk. "Don't say no. You have the technology to solve this problem. Why hold back?"

"It still has some holes, some use cases that aren’t handled—"

"What, like some one-in-a-million situation—"

"One in a million is still one, Natasha, and once I put it out there, it’s out there. Which means it can be hacked, reverse-engineered, circumnavigated, and then we’re back to square one on this."

She walks up to him and gets in his way, forcing him to stand still. "So you’ll improve upon it. Tony, this doesn’t sound like you at all. Where's Mr. Futurist? Of _course_ someone will find flaws eventually. Of course someone will develop some other mind control device that this doesn’t catch. It’s inevitable. And then you’ll make yours better, and they’ll make theirs better—but what else are you going to do? It’s not right to hoard this, when your friends need it."

Tony puts his head in his hands, and that's when she knows she's got him. "You didn’t even tell me who it was who needs it," he complains.

"I’m a spy; I keep secrets. It's what I do."

"It's a lot to ask, Romanova."

" _Trust_ me, Stark."

He sighs. "I’ll… _ugh_. Fine. How many doses did you say you needed?"

"How many can you give me?"

Tony rubs his temple. "Natasha…"

She decides to have pity on him. "Four. I'll take four."

"I really hope I don't regret this." He looks at a clock on the wall and starts talking to himself. "Okay, so I have to be in San Francisco at five, then I have a thing in Tokyo, then… maybe on the way back?" He glances at her. "Want to go world-hopping with me? Or do you have plans?"

"Wouldn't want to slow you down," Natasha says. "Plus, I can't be recognized."

"So you'll wait here?" Tony suggests. "I'll section off an empty wing for you or something, set you up with a computer, anything you need. It'll be a while."

"You promise this isn't a trap? You're not just keeping me in one place so that they can find me?"

"That hurts. That gets me right here." He taps on his chest. "Come on. I don't even know who 'they' are."

He shows her to one of the residential areas, a nice suite with a stocked fridge, probably used to house visiting business contacts, and sets her up with a computer, as promised. "I turned off the cameras on the way. Don't bring down the company while you're here, okay?" 

"I love that we have so much trust in each other," Natasha says. 

"Good, I'm going to hold you to that."

 

 

She falls asleep waiting. It's late when he gets back, so late that she considers staying there the night, but time is of the essence. Tony hands over the briefcase with a pained look on his face. She's afraid she's going to have to pry it out of his hands, but he lets it go and gives her instructions on how to use what's inside.

"Thank you so much for this," she says, as she's leaving. "I owe you one."

"Don't be silly. I wish I could do more. Natasha, who are you running from?"

She laughs and shakes her head. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Very soon, this fic will be the only relevant Google search result for "Attilan drinking age." Putting my name on the map!


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Daisy put together a plan.

The sun is already up when Natasha wakes up to the sound of Bobbi showering on the other side of the wall. After getting back to a dark and silent apartment well past two in the morning, she'd woken Clint (she considered giving him the injection in his sleep, but she's really trying to move away from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s tactics) and given him half an explanation and a full dose of treatment. Crawling into bed afterwards had felt so good, and she really doesn't want to get up now, but she's generally unable to sleep when others nearby are awake.

She gets into the shower after Bobbi finishes up, and she sets the tap to cold, hoping it'll give her the energy she needs to make up for the missing hours of sleep. The crisp water is vicious but bitingly effective, and she's definitely awake by the time she turns the water off and wraps herself in her towel. After catching her breath and patting herself dry, she dries her hair with the towel, gets dressed, and goes out to see who else is up.

The television is on in the living room, playing a cartoon, with the group sitting around it. Daisy's perched on the arm of one of the couches with a bowl of cereal, while Bobbi does some sort of plank routine on the rug. Barnes is reading a book on the same couch as Daisy, occasionally glancing up at the screen. As Natasha passes by, Daisy puts a hand on her wrist to get her attention, and they walk together to the kitchen, out of hearing range of the others.

"How was your trip yesterday?" Daisy asks her in a low voice, keeping an eye on the other room to make sure no one is looking at them.

"Successful," Natasha answers.

"I'm going to need a little bit more than that."

"I got ahold of a certain tech that will make sure the nanobots in Clint's brain will no longer send an alert to S.H.I.E.L.D. when they're tampered with."

"Some kind of scrambler?"

"Something like that."

"Where did you—"

"Can't tell you that," Natasha says, cutting her off.

"Is it stolen?"

"As a matter of fact, it was obtained with permission from its previous owner."

Daisy raises her eyebrows. "That's a new tactic for you."

She doesn't bother to dignify the slight with a response.

"Sorry," Daisy says after a beat. "I'm grateful, really. One concern, though: is it possible that this tech will interfere with the process of decrypting the memories?"

She'd had the same question herself, but once she knew what she was dealing with, it was pretty easy to get Tony talking about how all his inventions fit together, and he alleviated her concerns without even knowing he was doing it. "It shouldn't be a problem; it's pretty nonintrusive." The second part of that sentence is a lie, but the first part is true, anyway.

"Excellent. I guess we're good to go."

Daisy holds off on the group announcement until Clint gets up, and then lets everyone know that they'll be breaking into Tony's secret lab the next day.

"My favorite thing in the world to do," Clint says.

Bucky laughs. "You and me both."

 

 

Daisy's been locked in her room for hours, working on the files they brought back the other day, and when she comes out for a bathroom break, Bobbi takes advantage. She waits right outside the bathroom, and then ambushes Daisy as she walks out.

"What's up, boss?"

Daisy keeps walking, but she leaves the bedroom door open so that Bobbi can follow her in. She sits down on the bed, and pulls over a keyboard on a wheeled table. "What's up, free agent?"

Bobbi looks around and marvels at how the place has been transformed into an office. There are three monitors set up on two different surfaces, a laptop plugged into a docking station, and a stack of drives on the desk, plus a legal pad filled with scribbles on the bed next to her.

"How's work going?" she asks.

Daisy sits down and logs back into her computer. "Slow. Everything's got like who knows how many layers of security, and I have to be very careful to make sure I don't trip anything up which would garble all the files."

"You have a backup, though."

"Of course. I've already needed to use it a few times. It's just a hassle."

"Anything I can help with?"

"Eh." Daisy dismisses her with a wave. "I'm sure I'll need your sick biochemistry skills once I make these files readable, but until then, if you could keep the caffeine coming…"

"Sure thing."

She moves out to the kitchen and checks on the coffee pot, which is just about empty, so she pours it out, then switches out the filter for a clean one and pours the beans into the machine. When everything is ready, she presses the start button, and the whirring of the grinding beans brings Clint into the room like a Pavlovian dog. She's not even sure where he came from.

"What's this project Daisy's working on?" he asks.

"That's the question," Bobbi says. She explains the story to him, telling him about the trip she and Bucky took the other day to recover the files.

Clint scrunches up his nose. "I could never do that. I hate reconnaissance."

"It's even better when you're jetlagged." He gives her a confused look, so she adds, "We kind of took an impromptu vacation in Hawaii after… after we all met up. Just got back a few days ago."

"You don't say. We always talked about going to Hawaii someday. For real." They _had_ talked about that, once upon a time. He was there once with the Avengers, she knows. It was before they'd met, but things were tense, and they didn't exactly get a chance to sightsee at the time.

"It was really cool. The nature out there is incredible. The trees, and the water, and the _mountains_. You should definitely go."

They slip into silence, which is then interrupted as the coffee begins to drip into the pot.

"Now that I have one less gig in my life, maybe it'll free up time for vacations," Clint says. "I'd thought I turned into some sort of douche-y gym rat. The kind who has a really strong opinion about which is better, deadlifts or squats."

"And which camp did you think you were in? Keep in mind that if you say deadlift, I want another divorce."

He laughs. "Unfair! I'm an archer; I need the upper body strength."

"All right, fine, you're off the hook for this one."

The machine stops dripping, and Clint reaches for the coffee cups, but Bobbi takes the entire pot and heads for the door. "It's for the director."

"C'mon, Morse, just one cup," he says, holding it out. "Help a guy out. I'll switch my answer to squats, whatever you want."

"Ha." She relents and fills up his cup three-quarters of the way. "You always know exactly how to hook me."

"It's my superpower."

"Yeah, yeah. I'd better get out of here before I end up surrendering the rest of this." 

 

 

The five of them spar in the park later in the afternoon, and then they go out for a last hurrah, to a trendy bar/restaurant in Fishtown with live music. They decide to sit outside, so as not to overwhelm Clint's ears with the music, so they push a few tables together and get cozy. Daisy "Drinking Age In Attilan Is Eighteen" Johnson has a few pretty authentic-looking fake driver's licenses to choose from, so they order drinks with their meal. The music drifts out through the open windows, but not loudly enough to interfere with the conversation.

Clint polishes off three drinks before Daisy cuts him off and hands him a glass of water. "You don't want to go into tomorrow with a hangover," she warns. At this point, he's not far enough gone so that he'll be in bad shape tomorrow, but he has even less of a filter than usual, and a group of friends who pass their table on their way down the street, arguing passionately about which Arctic Monkeys album was better than which other Arctic Monkeys album, sets him off on a rant of his own.

"What's so amazing about that, is, look at them, they clearly disagree, it's very important to them, but they're just talking. Why can't we do that? Why do we always have to _hit_ each other all the time?" No one answers, so he keeps going. "And I do it too, which sucks. I suck. Buck, remember when you were—when you were Cap, and I showed up at your place and I fought you because I thought you were trying to replace him? Why didn't I just _talk_ to you, tell you how I was feeling? Or you, Nat, when you were living with Daredevil in San Francisco, and I came out there and—"

Natasha groans. "The less said about _that_ , the better."

"The more said, the better!" Bobbi objects, perking up. She's never heard this story. "What did he do?"

"He tried to fight Daredevil to win me back."

Bobbi turns to Clint in fake jealousy. "You dueled for her hand? You never dueled for _my_ hand."

"I'll do it right now!" Clint exclaims, placing his hands on the edge of the table as if he's about to stand up. "Just point me at the dastardly knave, and I'll destroy him."

"If that's some sort of sly jab about my lack of a dating life, I'll have you know—"

"Really? Your dating life is lacking?" His nose wrinkles.

"A temporary dry spell, that's all." To be truthful, she hasn't dated anyone since they broke up, but she's certainly not about to admit that in front of the whole group.

Clint scoffs. "They should be lining up around the block for you. Idiots."

She makes eye contact with Bucky, gives him a look like, _See what I mean?_ Clint is upset that she's not dating other guys: _Platonic_. Bucky's covering his mouth with the back of his hand, but she's pretty sure that he's laughing behind it. Jerk.

"What about that S.H.I.E.L.D. guy?" Daisy asks.

That gets her attention. "What S.H.I.E.L.D. guy?"

"I thought there was a guy at S.H.I.E.L.D. that you had a thing with."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Bobbi says. "There's no S.H.I.E.L.D. guy."

"Okay. I must have gotten confused. Maybe it was someone else."

"My point is," Clint cuts in, "my point is, why does violence always need to be a first resort? Regular people don't get into fistfights every time they disagree on something, and we're supposed to be heroes!" 

"Say that a little louder," Daisy mutters, looking around to see if anyone nearby heard him.

The sarcasm is lost on him, and he continues, "What kind of role models are we?" He turns to Bucky. "I'm so sorry I hit you, man. You were a great Cap. You were perfect."

"Thanks," Bucky says, clearly trying very hard to keep a straight face.

"Who wants dessert?" Natasha asks.

"I think I should see a therapist," Clint says.

 

 

They take both cars to the meeting point, just in case something goes south. Bobbi and Bucky go in Daisy's car, and Natasha and Clint follow them, so that both groups arrive at the same time. When they get there, Daisy's contact is there to meet them. She recognizes him, although she's not sure they've ever been formally introduced.

The guy sticks out his hand as they get out of the car. "Eden Fesi. Manifold. I was never here."

She laughs as she shakes his hand. "Bobbi Morse. Mockingbird. Likewise."

"And you're Bucky, of course."

"Nice to meet you." Bucky nods.

The doors of the second car open up, and Natasha and Clint get out.

"Manifold?" Clint says. "You're our secret ticket in?"

"They love using me for my powers," Eden responds. "Hey, Hawkeye, Widow."

It clicks for her that the two of them are on the Avengers with him, while she's mostly been out of the loop with that crowd, ever since Luke's Avengers disbanded...for the first time since returning to Earth. She had S.H.I.E.L.D., and she's always told herself she was more of an agent than the Avenger, but it hasn't stopped her from putting on a costume every day instead of the same black jumpsuit and insignia as the rest of her colleagues. All of a sudden, she has an urge to call Jessica and find out what she and Luke and the baby have been up to.

"I don't see any secret lab," Natasha says.

"Well, no, I wasn't going to give you an address," Eden says. "I'm not that bad."

"How far can you teleport?" Bucky asks.

"Far enough. Everyone ready?"

A few flashes of light later, they're inside a building. They've arrived in a hallway which leads to a huge main room, with lots of glass partitions and different types of gadgets in each sectioned-off area. All the way in the back seems to be some sort of server room, and the rest is full of workstations and tables with tools and half-finished prototypes lying around.

They follow Daisy over to a chair with lots of wires and screens and gizmos surrounding it. "Here we are," Daisy says. "Ready, Hawkeye?"

"This isn't going to be like last time, is it?" Eden says, without elaborating.

"Nope. We've found a way to override that little problem."

"Glad to hear it."

Clint steps up to the chair and runs his fingers over the headrest. "This thing hurt?"

"Not at all," Daisy answers. "You'll feel a little disoriented afterwards, but that should be it as far as side effects."

He takes a deep breath, then sits in the chair. They all crowd around, and then he looks at Bobbi and opens his mouth like he has something to say. He doesn't, though, only stretches his arm out at her, palm up, and she puts her hand in his.

Daisy straps him in, then fiddles with a device behind his head, and locks his head into place. She moves over to a bunch of screens nearby. 

"So, this is it, huh?" Clint says. "Can't wait to find out who killed Kennedy."

"I thought that was Bucky," Bobbi jokes weakly, drawing weak laughter from the room.

Bucky crosses his arms and leans back against the wall. "I guess you're all laughing because you think that's a joke."

"Count backwards from ten, please," Daisy says.

"Ten," Clint says. He squeezes Bobbi's hand. "Nine. Eight. Se….ven…. Sssss..."

He's out, his hand limp. Bobbi squeezes it herself for a second, then gently lays it down against his thigh and crosses her arm over her body. She looks up at the projection in front of them, which shows that a process called **Backup** is at 2%. "How long is this going to take?" she asks.

Daisy looks at Eden. "Somewhere between forty minutes to an hour, I'd guess."

"Do we need to be quiet?" Bucky asks.

Daisy shakes her head. "His brain is, uh, in read-only mode."

Bobbi looks at Clint's unconscious body, entirely vulnerable out there in that chair, and all at once, she's seized by panic. What if the machine fritzes? What if there's a power outage? Or an earthquake?

She hears voices in the background, but it feels like the sound is coming from far away.

"We don't need to wait here, not all of us. We could go outside, have lunch."

"Eugh, feels too much like Joseph's brothers."

"Who?"

Read-only mode, Daisy said, which means he'll be fine, at least for this part. The machine is just taking a backup now, so that if anything _does_ go wrong during the decryption stage, it'll be easy to fix. The process is perfectly safe. 

"From the Bible? After they dumped him in the pit, they sat down to eat?"

"We didn't exactly dump him in a pit."

"Hopefully not."

Bobbi looks back at the screen and lets herself get lost in the progress bar. The backup is incrementing by one percentage point about every ten seconds, and the bottom one, which is labeled **Decryption** , will presumably begin once the backup is done.

Bucky walks up next to her and hands her a sandwich. "Need some entertainment?" he asks. 

She forces a smile. "You came prepared?" 

He holds up a stack of Archie comic books in his left hand.

Despite herself, a laugh escapes, and she helps herself to one of the books he's holding. "Thanks, Bucky Barnes."

He turns to Natasha. "How about you, Widow?"

She looks at him suspiciously. "Do I like those?" It's the first time she's slipped. 

"You'll just have to read one and find out, won't you?" 

Natasha takes two of them, then sits against the wall and makes herself comfortable. Bucky continues handing out food and books, then sits across from Natasha, leans back against the wall, and closes his eyes.

Eden and Daisy end up wandering around the facility, checking out Stark's toys. Bobbi tries to read, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't quite summon the mental wherewithal needed to immerse herself in the world of Archie's gang and their formulaic shenanigans. She ends up glancing at the screen multiple times a minute, and eventually she gives up pretending that she's doing anything else but watching the numbers progress. It's slow going, but her focus is razor sharp, and when the top bar finishes and the bottom bar starts, she begins to get nervous again. Nothing happens, though—the entire process runs completely smoothly, if slowly, and _finally_ , the number on the bottom bar switches over to say 100%, and a window pops up on the screen—

"It's done," Daisy says.

 

 

Natasha's head snaps up at the announcement. Daisy is pulling away the equipment around Clint's head, but she leaves the restraints on his body. "He should come to any second," Daisy says.

She puts down the (exceedingly silly, she doesn't enjoy it at all) book and goes to stand on the left of Clint's chair, across from Bobbi, who hasn't moved from the folding chair she brought over earlier. She examines Clint's face, can see his eyelids flutter, and then they open.

"Back with us, Barton?" Daisy asks matter-of-factly.

"Um," he says in response. His voice is husky, and he blinks hard a few times.

"And there's his catchphrase," Natasha says.

He clears his throat to protest. " _Mean_."

"Did it work?" Daisy asks. "Try to focus, Barton. Do you remember?"

"Oh, that." He closes his eyes again, and then, "Oh." He swallows, and squeezes his eyes shut, like he's trying to make it go away. "Any chance you gave me the wrong memories?"

"That's not really how this works," Daisy says.

He sighs and opens his eyes, gaze landing on Bobbi, who suddenly looks very small in her five-foot-nine frame. "You were there."

Bobbi nods. 

Clint swallows. "We left you behind."

She closes her eyes, nods again.

"We were on a mission, to assassinate Forson, and—," he cuts himself off, and frowns. "I don’t really understand, Nick shot him, and then all hell broke loose, and then Maria Hill was giving orders instead of Daisy, and then we left. All of a sudden I remembered that you had skipped the mission. Only, it wasn’t true, you hadn’t skipped it, you were still there."

"Yeah, I was there." Her face, usually so expressive and open, is as tight as a vise, as she fills in the blanks. "I was inside. Forson had used a decoy originally, and then I saw him. I was lining up for the kill shot and I didn't know about the structural reorganization, and... Hill couldn't talk me down, so she used their magic word on me and put me in 'off' mode."

Natasha doesn't gasp, due to years of training and experience, but she does feel a little shocked at that. With her mind wiped, Bobbi wouldn't have known… anything. She wouldn't have understood what she was doing on A.I.M. Island, wouldn't even have known her way around the base or who their double agent, the only person on the island looking out for her, was.

"And then we came back, and then you got shot, and you died, but it wasn't really you, it was a trick. Oh, my God. I gave the order to take off." Clint sounds shattered. "Oh, no. I’m so, so sorry."

Bobbi looks at him, smiles a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, and speaks lightly. "Nothing to be sorry about, sport. Lots of us have done much worse under mind control."

"Still, I—"

"Don’t worry about it." Bobbi looks around the room. "Well. Now he remembers. Mission accomplished. Good job, team. I… need to go."

"Wait—"

But she's already gone, her blond ponytail swinging behind her as she hustles into the front hallway where they came from. He tries to get up, but he's still strapped in.

"I wouldn't get up for the next fifteen minutes," Daisy says. "Eden, can you get Barnes to the car and then come back for me and Bobbi? Widow, you stay with Clint until the time is up, then you can unstrap him. Eden?" 

Eden nods. "I got you."

There's a flash of light, and when it fades, Manifold and Barnes are gone.

Daisy approaches Clint with a pen flashlight in her hands, which she shines in his eyes like a doctor checking for a concussion. "Clint, how are you feeling? Any headaches or physical weirdness?"

"I'm fine," he says, sounding anything but.

"Let me know if anything changes. I'm going to check on Bobbi." She walks off in the direction where Bobbi disappeared.

Clint bangs his head against the headrest. "I should be doing that."

"You should be following orders," Natasha insists, cupping his chin to hold him still.

He sulks. "You're one to talk."

"Do as I say…"

He finally stops struggling, so she lets go of his chin. "You knew about all this, didn't you," Clint says.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What do you think all this," she waves her hand around the room, "has been about?"

He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. "What am I going to say to her?"

She gives a cynical smile. "I'm not the one you ask for advice on what to say to people."

"I guess not." He closes his eyes. "Bobbi warned me that I might be upset by what I found out."

"A bit of an understatement, huh?"

"I could just _kill_ Hill. I could just..."

"I know."

"She made me leave Bobbi behind enemy lines. I would never, I would _never_ leave her behind enemy lines, especially with a wiped brain, oh my God, and they made me do that." His voice is starting to get frantic, and she repeats, "I know," trying to soothe him.

"If there's anything I would never do…" he continues, and then snorts. "But I don't need to tell you, you know all about being made to do things that you would never do. Except S.H.I.E.L.D. is supposed to be the good guys. Dammit." He closes his eyes. "Thank you, Nat. It sucks, but it's better that I know."

She puts her hand on his head and strokes his hair, trying to be reassuring.

"I mean it, thank you. I wish… if only we could do this for you. I think that if you could recover the memories you're missing, I think you would be happy. You were happy, before."

"Please don't tell me about my lost memories," she says automatically, but it's too late—the idea of her having been so happy that her friends felt it for her, missed it on her behalf, so long afterwards, that's something to be curious about. 

 

 

Bobbi doesn't want to be seen running, but she needs to get out of there. She's barely holding it together, and she has to get somewhere where no one can find her—where no one can see her like this. She can feel the thickness in her throat, and she starts to take deep breaths, trying to regulate her emotions. She makes it to the bathroom and locks herself inside, then leans against the door. In through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose—

Her inhale ends in a gasp, and she sinks onto the floor. She wants to scream, but she can't draw in enough breath at a time, and all that comes out is a string of sobs as her body shudders with each ragged breath.

She can't explain why it's now, of all times, that it's hitting her like this. Ever since the moment Maria Hill wiped her brain in the middle of enemy territory, she's just been moving forward, one step at a time, and this is the first time she's had a chance to stop and let herself feel it. She's having flashbacks to when she first saw Clint and Natasha in the apartment, those first few moments where she thought they were there for her, before he opened his mouth and disabused her of the notion. Some self-indulgent, self-pitying voice in her head taunts her: _They abandoned you, they left you to die and nobody noticed and nobody cared_. She knows it's not true, but she can't make it shut up, and she wants it to go away, this feeling of smallness, and the shame… she was so stupid, so _stupid_ to have willingly given up control of her own mind to anyone else.

Bobbi cries until her body is drained, and then she gets up and looks in the mirror. She pulls off her glasses to check the damage. Her eyes are red, but the rest of her face isn't as bad as she would have expected. And with her tinted lenses, it'll be possible to mask it. It's not like she'll fool anyone, but she doesn't want it to be too obvious what a wreck she is, so she turns on the sink and gives her face a good rinse, until she looks almost normal, then dries it all with a paper towel.

Looking back in the mirror, she blinks a few times, then tries out a few different smiles in the mirror, finally settling on one before she unlocks the door and steps out. Daisy's out in the hallway, but a respectable distance away, so that they can both pretend she didn't hear the entire thing.

"Hey. You ready to go back?" Daisy asks. "Eden's taking us in shifts, so we don't need to wait."

She's never been so grateful for Daisy's cool head as she is this moment. "Yeah. I'm ready to go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To any of my readers who are big Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fans and didn't appreciate my jab at a certain ship, I'm so sorry, I love you, I didn't mean it!


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of relationships get turned on their heads. And Daisy finally manages to get access to their recovered (i.e. stolen) intel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading/commenting! Feedback makes my week.

When Natasha arrives back at the apartment with Clint, everything is all wrong. That is to say, everyone is aggressively pretending that everything is normal. They're all a bunch of liars, and nobody wants to break the ice, including her. Bobbi and Daisy go for a grocery run, and they all prepare dinner together for the first time, so there's lots of talk about carrots and ground meat and how fresh the tomatoes look and the crispness of the lettuce.

The _crispness_ of the _lettuce_.

They sit down to eat, and it's even worse. 

"This is really good lasagna," Bobbi says, taking seconds.

"Delicious," Daisy agrees.

Nobody has any dissenting opinions on the lasagna, so they don't talk for another few minutes, and then Bobbi asks, "Who wants some salad?"

"I'll take some," Bucky says, reaching his hand out for her to pass him the salad bowl. "Can I get some more lasagna, too? It's great."

Natasha's tempted to throw the lasagna out the window.

After dinner, Daisy goes into her room to work on the files, and Bobbi yawns the most transparently fake yawn ever and says that she's going to turn in early tonight. She leaves the room, and it's just Natasha with the two boys. They finish loading the dishwasher and then stand around in silence for a few minutes, until Clint says, decisively, "I'm going to talk to her."

Natasha nods, but he's not even looking. He walks off, leaving her alone with Barnes for the first time since they all met up.

They hear a knocking, and then the bedroom door opens and closes.

"That's going to be quite a conversation," Barnes says.

"Yeah." Natasha looks in the direction of the bedroom. "How much did you know?" 

"She told me the whole story—as much as she knew, anyway. It sounds harsh."

"It's just an awful combination of circumstances. Anyone but Hill would have stopped her verbally. And if they needed to retreat and leave her behind, anyone but Clint would have done it of their own free will—reluctantly, fine, but still—and she would have understood it, too."

He frowns. "The impression I'm getting is that Hill is pretty trigger-happy with the mind control."

"I wouldn't say 'happy,' exactly, but, yeah. She's very much a 'needs of the many' person." At his blank look, she says, "Star Trek? No?"

He smiles sheepishly. "I'm still working on catching up on all pop culture created between 1945 and 2010."

"Right," she says. "Well, the line is, 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,' and that's basically her motto. She does what she thinks is the best thing for the long-term, and she doesn't really get close to people, so that she doesn't have to think about what it means that she regularly wipes the minds of her employees, whose well-being she's technically responsible for."

"Not you, though."

She feels a little bit judged by that, but she tries not to let it show. "I don't think so, not to the same extent. I see some of myself in her, sure—" 

"That's not what I mean," he interrupts. "I mean, she didn't wipe your mind."

"What are you talking about? They did it to all of us."

"Please. You never had those nanobots implanted," Bucky says, matter-of-factly. "You would never agree to that, not even for a good cause, not after all you've been through."

Natasha is shocked for a second, so shocked that she lets it show. He's right, of course. It’s just, he keeps surprising her, and every time he does, it knocks her off balance. This is such a big part of her life that she doesn't remember.

She's given herself away by her silence, and he smiles to himself, and suddenly she's infuriated. It's not _fair_ that he should know so much about her, while he's just a name and a face. "Good for you," she snarls.

When he sees her expression, his face falls. "No, Natasha, I didn't mean— _God_ , I'm sorry."

His expression is so genuine, so concerned. Seeing his distress at having hurt her, her anger instantly morphs into something else, something strange and warm. She's still agitated, but she's starting to feel the attraction that hasn't been there until now, and she wants more. 

"You're right," she says. "I would never let them control my mind, but I let them believe they did."

"That's my girl." She thinks that slipped out by mistake—he's not supposed to say things like that, but his eyes are so full of pride—for her?—and admiration, that she can't find it in herself to rebuke him.

She leans closer, just an inch, just enough to to make them both aware of the distance.

"You know me so well," she murmurs, leaning closer, her eyes half-lidded. She wonders if he put his hands on her, if it would feel familiar, if her body would know his. 

She can hear him swallow, see the muscles in his jaw moving, and she wants to—she wants to feel those little muscles with her fingertips, to examine him, to learn this man that she must have loved. He must have been incredible. She wants to understand.

He doesn't back away when she closes the distance between them, when she places her lips against his. He doesn't do anything when she takes one hand and wraps it around the back of his head, and the other one to his heart. His mouth is soft, and he lets her in, but he doesn't return the kiss. 

She pulls back, and looks at him, trying to figure him out. 

"Maybe even better than I know myself?" she says.

" _Natalia_." His voice cracks, this big strong man with the metal arm, who looks like he's utterly lost.

"Will you remind me?" she asks softly. 

He looks shattered. "No. Not like this."

The rejection doesn’t sting. It doesn’t matter to her; he's practically a stranger. And, in any case...he's right. He's absolutely right. "Of course." She takes a step back, leans against the table, tries to look casual. 

"So, how did you get out of it?" Bucky asks. "The nanobots."

She blinks, clearing her mind of the temporary fog she'd allowed in, getting back on track with the _relevant_ conversation. "Well, they put the nanobots in me, just like everyone else. But what they didn't know is that months earlier, after what happened with Novokov, I had gone to Tony, and told him I’d had it with people playing around with my head. I asked him to develop something to make sure it would never happen again."

"And he did?"

"He created this program, an injection of nanobots of his own, and it works kind of like an inoculation. Recognizes suspicious activity and foreign objects and so on and neutralizes whatever it finds. It can’t restore memories that were already deleted, though, which is why we needed the other machine."

Bucky looks suitably impressed. "That’s really useful. It sounds more comprehensive than what they gave me, anyway."

She doesn't know what he's talking about, which is frustrating, but she's starting to get used to it, and she continues. "Yeah, but he's being annoying about it. He’s terrified that someone will get their hands on it and reverse engineer it, so he swore me to secrecy and he’s sitting on it for now. Well, now it’s extended to the rest of you, too. That day when I went off on my own, I was successful in convincing him to get me more doses. I gave Clint one, but Clint and Daisy just know that it just scrambles the frequency, so that S.H.I.E.L.D. can't find him through the nanobots they gave him—usually, it notifies their systems when someone tries to get around the wipes. I wanted to wait to make sure it would work before I told everyone the full story."

"So how was the thing back at the lab able to decrypt his memories?" he asks. "Isn't that considered a foreign object?"

"Theoretically, yes, but since both designs are by Tony, he allows for the application of the encryption/decryption algorithm under certain conditions. I could temporarily allow for the encryption of my memories by saying a certain passcode, and it uses a checksum to allow for the decryption."

"Glad I asked." Bucky laughs, his face transmitting the fact that he understood about a third of what she'd just said. Well, now she knows one more thing about him.

"Basically, Tony designed it so that someone could be protected against someone else trying to brainwash them, but still wanting a way to hide their memories even against torture, telepathy, etc. Kind of like what the Secret Avengers originally intended. So you can use a verbal password and go through the process to 'erase' the memories, and then once the danger has passed, you can get them back, because there's a built-in exception."

He nods. "That's...wow. When are you going to tell everyone?"

She shrugs. "My original plan was to bring it up tonight, but I guess I should let the Bartons work out their issues first. And who knows when we'll see Daisy again. Once she starts working, she loses all sense of time."

"Right." Bucky looks around at the empty room, and she realizes that she feels comfortable, that she's been able to relax and let her guard down talking to him this entire time. A doubt crosses her mind, and she wonders if the reason she feels at ease is because she knows she's supposed to feel at ease with him, and this second-guessing just won't do.

"Do you want to watch TV?" Bucky asks, at the same time that Natasha says, "I'm going to go finish up a book I'm—"

"Oh," they say, flustered, at the same time.

"I mean—" she starts.

"It's okay," Bucky says. "Go read. I'm fine out here."

She gives him what probably comes out as an awkward smile. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night, Na— Natasha."

 

 

Bobbi's just putting away her yoga mat when there’s a knock on the door. "Come in," she calls.

Clint enters, closing the door behind him.

"Hey," she says, trying to be casual, as if she hasn’t been avoiding him all afternoon.

"Hey." He stands by the door, as if waiting for a second invitation.

"What’s…" she trails off, realizing that playing dumb is ineffective. This isn’t going to just go away. "Come in," she says again.

He comes over, seating himself on her side of the bed. "You ran out on me this morning."

"I’m sorry."

"Oh my God, never apologize to me again, Bobbi—I could spend my entire life at your feet and still feel sick about what I did, leaving you behind there like that." It comes out like a burst dam, one continuous stream of thought. "You don’t owe me _anything_."

She sits down next to him, the ice inside her starting to thaw. "It wasn’t your fault; you know that, right? I don’t _blame_ you."

"Maybe not, but I did it. I remember doing it. It’s like I’m two different people. Losing my memories and then getting them back again—the me who was having wacky adventures with Nat and Jess and Fury Jr. and Phil and the me who was sick over having abandoned you in the field, who held you as you died in his arms, _again_ , but it wasn’t really you, _again_ , and then—you know, the first thing happened after the second thing, but in my memories… it feels like a parallel timeframe or something. I feel _awful_."

Isn't this what she wanted to hear? That all of this crap is hitting him as hard as it is her? This should be making her feel better, but for some reason, it's not working.

Then he turns to face her, putting on leg up on the bed, and says, "Okay, now your turn."

"For what?"

"I didn’t come here just to talk; I want to hear what you have to say. What was it like for you?"

"What, so you can beat yourself up about it some more? Come on, Clint. I’m not going to do that."

"That’s not why," he says. "I just think you need to talk about it and have someone listen. And I want to let you know, that...I’m here. If that’s what you want."

"Oh. Thanks." She thinks about it, trying to describe what she felt at the time. "It was...it was weird. I also had that thing, with the different versions of me remembering things at different times. This brainwashing thing is so messed up; it shouldn’t be allowed."

"Agreed."

"Anyway, it’s not like I felt abandoned at the time, you know? I was just confused. I was in the camotech for, like, half a week, and I didn’t know it. So I didn’t understand why I was in the body of some A.I.M. researcher. And, fine, I’m trained as a spy, I try to make the best of it, and then I get caught out, and it’s back to Bobbi, and then they manipulated my brain even more, and some memories came back, and Forson tried to implant these fake memories into me of my having been involved with A.I.M. way back when, to turn me, and he was winning, and then you showed up to rescue me, and—at that point, I wasn’t thinking anymore, I was just running on instinct. My brain was, _wzzzzzzh_ , fried, and it didn’t really turn back on again until after I knocked Forson out and had to escape. All of a sudden, I needed to use my brain again, and I remembered where I was and what Hill had done. I think whatever Forson did unlocked my erased memories, so I guess S.H.I.E.L.D.’s method isn’t foolproof." She laughs bitterly. "Too bad for them. Anyway, then I was just angry. Not at you, not even at Hill, just angry in general. At the world, I don't know. I didn’t understand why she did it until I got in touch with Daisy, and she explained what had happened."

"Oh, God."

"And I was doing okay with that, I think," she says slowly, trying to find the words. "I understand not wanting to start a war. I understand that either she has faith in my abilities to extract myself, or she thinks the stakes are so high that it's worth it if I just don't make it back, I really do.

"But I didn't know until you told me what had made you all leave A.I.M. Island. I'd thought it was just a strategic retreat. And when you said that, that she did that, it made me realize how fragile it all is, everything that we are. Hill made you think that I was safe, like it was nothing, and that was your truth. Then you quit, and 'Reverie,' suddenly the Secret Avengers are some wacky-zany-lovable-weirdo team that you love being in. You know? Some off-the-rails assassin digs into Natasha's head, all of a sudden she's never heard of the person she loves most in the world. Anyone could just snap their fingers, and our pasts become meaningless."

He wipes his eyes. "Shit, Bobbi." He laughs at his own vulnerability, something she's always appreciated about him, and puts his arm around her, pulling her in for a hug, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Ugh, this world."

"Yeah, good summary." She says, squeezing him back.

He pulls back just a fraction, to look her in the eyes, and she meets his stare. She's anxious, not knowing what's going to happen next, and her nerves are all on edge—even though she knows better, knows that slipping into sex with emotions running high would be disastrous, she doesn't want him to let go.

What does happen next is that Clint slides his hands up her back so that he's cupping her shoulder blades, and says, "I wish I could tell you that would never happen. But you're too smart to fall for that." His eyes light up suddenly, like he has an idea. "Can I give you a back rub, or something?"

"Sure," she says, both relieved and disappointed. No, not disappointed. Her ex-husband's back rubs are the stuff of legend.

He kicks off his shoes and moves to the back of the bed, leaning against the headboard, and she sits in front of him, his legs surrounding hers. He pulls her back so that she's leaning back into his arms, and for a split second—for such a split second that she can't tell whether or not it's an accident—his face is buried in the crook of her neck, as he edges the straps of her tank top down over her arms.

She hopes he can't tell that she feels like she's on fire—it's been so long—and it’s a bad idea, but she wants him to make a move, to slip his hand somewhere dangerous, somewhere sensitive. Instead, he gathers her long hair together and lays it over her right shoulder, then presses his thumb against the revealed skin at the left side of her neck, brushing downwards towards the top of her spine, and she suppresses a shiver. He shuffles back a bit, then puts two warm, strong arms on her shoulders, and gets to work, squeezing the outsides of her shoulders and slowly working his way inwards. The massage feels so good it almost cures her arousal. Surely, this is better than sex.

"Mmmm, working off the guilt?" she teases.

"Something like that." His fingers dig into the muscles right by her neck, working out knots she’s been carrying around forever, or so it seems. "If you want to hear something twisted, I was kind of mad at you when the image inducer turned off and it turned out that Yelena was dead, not you. I mean, I didn’t want you to be dead, obviously, but I was mad at you for putting me through that pain, as if you could have somehow gotten me a message so I would have known. It’s stupid."

"It was stupid of _me_ to be hurt by the fact that you guys left me there and brought Yelena back with you, even though that was exactly my plan."

"Yeah, that is kind of stupid." He laughs, but not maliciously.

"So we’re both stupid. I think everyone is stupid sometimes about that kind of thing. You know. The heart and the mind aren’t always in line with each other."

"I guess."

He moves down her back, avoiding her ticklish areas. After a few seconds, he says, "Rhodey quit, too."

"Oh. Good for him. I’m glad to hear that."

"Yeah, Hill erased his memories too, then sent him off. I guess he’s back to his normal life."

She looks over her shoulder at him. "You think we should tell him?"

"I do," he says.

"He grew up around here, didn't he?"

"Something like that." He wraps up the massage by pressing his all of his fingers on her nape against the back of her head, which actually makes her moan out loud, then he runs his fingers through her hair and sits back. "All done."

She moves over so that she's sitting next to him, sides pressed against each other because she still needs a little bit of physical contact. Bobbi's knees are pulled up by her chest, and Clint's legs are stretched out and crossed at the ankles.

"About Rhodey," Bobbi says. "It's possible that he might be better off not knowing. After all, he wasn’t dragged back like you were."

He shakes his head. "I think that if he knew what he didn’t know, he’d want to know."

"Very eloquent." She laughs. "I guess you’re right."

There's a knock at the door, then, and a few seconds later, Natasha opens it a crack and peeks her head in.

"Hey, Nat," Clint says. "Come on in."

"Did you two make up?" Natasha asks, walking over to her area of the room, then leaning over in front of her suitcase and starting to rifle through it.

"We're good," Bobbi says.

"That's good." Natasha pulls out some clothing from the suitcase.

"So, we were thinking—" Bobbi pauses as Natasha walks into the bathroom. The door is left open, so she figures Natasha is still open to conversation. "We were talking about Rhodey."

Natasha sticks her head out. "What about him?"

"We think we should bring him in."

There's silence for a few seconds, and then Natasha comes out, having changed into a black oversized t-shirt and blue and white striped shorts, and sits down on the bed. "Specifically him? Are we making a new team of ex-Secret Avengers?" Her voice expresses curiosity, but no judgment as to whether or not she thinks this is a good idea.

"Well, both of us had our minds wiped," Clint says. "It's not fair for me to get mine back and not him."

Natasha doesn't say anything for a minute. She crosses her arms over her chest, and looks between them, her expression carefully schooled. As usual, Bobbi wishes she had an inkling of a clue as to what Natasha is thinking.

Finally, she says, "Yeah, okay."

Bobbi and Clint exchange looks.

"Well, great," Bobbi says.

"We need to check with Fury before giving out his address, though," Natasha says. "I'll call him. And Tony. I need to explain everything to him. Otherwise he's going to notice that people keep using his inventions without writing their names on the sign-in sheet and he's going to get even more paranoid than he already is. Oh, speaking of which," she pulls out a cardboard box from next to her bed, "this is my collection of burner phones. Feel free to use them whenever you need, just make sure to use and dispose of them at least a mile away from the apartment."

"Awesome." Clint pushes himself off Bobbi's bed and starts in the direction of the phones. "I'm going to call Kate and check on Lucky."

"I said when there's a _need_. Not because you miss your dog, who is in perfectly capable hands."

Clint stops and crosses his arms, pouting. "I just don't want him to forget about me."

" _Clint_ ," Bobbi and Natasha say at the same time.

"Okay, okay." He holds up his hands and backs away. "I get it." He heads towards the door. "I'm going to go out for a walk. I'll see you guys later." He steps out, closing the door behind him.

They both stay up reading for a while, until the words start to blur together for her, and she sets her book down and goes to the bathroom to wash up. While she goes through her routine, she reviews the evening in her mind. Getting out her feelings was cathartic, and she didn't feel petty confessing to her illogical complaints, because Clint was ready to listen and share in return. It's a stark contrast to the way he was, all those years ago, when he found out what had happened with the Phantom Rider and didn't support her. And she's changed, too—thinking about when she first returned to Earth after her years with the Skrulls, how terrified she'd been that everything good in her life was just another illusion, that the carpet would be pulled out from underneath her any second, how she would never let herself truly trust him, pulling away from him time after time after time. It's too late, of course, but hypothetically….

She stops her train of thought quickly, and spits out her toothpaste.

 

 

After getting the okay from Fury, and then an hour-long phone call to Tony the next morning, Natasha returns to the apartment and calls a group meeting in the living room. She has the briefcase on the coffee table, and she explains to everyone what she told Bucky last night, about Tony's mind control vaccine and the extra doses in the case. They're all surprised, but no one as much as Clint, who seems to take it as a personal betrayal.

"I thought we were in this together," he gripes.

"This all happened months before S.H.I.E.L.D. approached us," Natasha says. "At that point, I had to improvise. And I didn't realize how extreme it would be. Once I did…"

"You got him out," Bobbi finishes. "And you inoculated him, too?"

Clint looks shocked at this. "You _what_?"

"The shot I gave you, the night before we broke into Tony's lab," Natasha says.

"You told me that it would stop the S.H.I.E.L.D. nanobots from transmitting my location!"

"Well, it does that, too."

He takes a deep breath, and then bursts out with, "What the hell, Nat? You lied to me!"

She's taken aback by the intensity of his reaction. They disagree on her methods all the time, but she's rarely seen him this angry, and she tries to explain. "It's Tony's invention, and he's been extremely secretive about this. When he first gave it to me, it was on condition that I never, ever tell anyone about it, and it wasn't easy for me to convince him that the rest of you needed it, too."

"The rest of us?" Daisy repeats, cutting in. "Even though our memories are basically intact?"

Natasha shakes her head. "It's two different things. The inoculation can't restore memories that were previously tampered with, obviously, because… well, the two of you, " she nods towards Daisy and Bobbi, "you still have the triggers. Theoretically, if Hill got to you, she could do whatever she wanted with your minds. Not to mention what would happen if someone with even fewer scruples got access to the program. And Barnes…," they exchange a look of understanding, "well, they planted the nanobots on us without our permission, and you never know. In any case, I wasn't going to leave you out."

"So, just checking, you're going to shoot us up with this stuff, and then we don't have to worry about S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore?" Daisy asks.

"The mindwipes will no longer be a threat," Natasha confirms. "If S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to come after us in other ways—well, they're S.H.I.E.L.D., they can—but in all likelihood, they still consider us resources, not threats, and it's in our best interests to stay that way. We should still try to stay off their radar."

"Well," Daisy says. "That's good and all, but the way you went about it… Barton is right. This is a team, Widow, and you can't keep secrets from us like this again. And don't you even think about saying anything about my age, because you know I'm right. Your teammates need to be able to trust you."

Natasha finishes out the argument in her head, both sides of it: _It was Tony's secret, not mine. Tony gave permission to tell anyone getting the injection. I wanted to make sure it would work. You can't expect your teammates to trust you when you keep secrets. You can't be on a team with the Black Widow and not expect her to keep secrets. You need to learn how to trust other people enough to share your secrets with them._

"I'll try," is all she says.

Natasha opens the briefcase, which contains three full needles and an empty one, as well as a bunch of individually wrapped sterilizing wipes, gauze pads, and bandages. "Now, who's going first?"

The three of them present their arms at the same time.

 

 

She takes care of the injections quickly, and as Natasha is covering the gauze on Bobbi’s arm with a bandage, Daisy turns to Bobbi and says, "After this, can you come with me? I have some things to show you."

"We're all done here," Natasha says, and so the two of them head to Daisy's room/office. Natasha finishes cleaning up, collecting wrappers to toss out, and locking up the briefcase with the empty needles inside. Clint is hovering the entire time, and when she finishes, he gives her a look, jaw tight, and says, "We need to talk."

Natasha glances at Bucky, who's pretending not to hear anything, then looks back at Clint and nods. "Your room?"

"My room."

She follows him there, and he opens the door for her, then closes it behind them. After the door clicks closed, he whirls on her, visibly angry. "Okay, Daisy might be okay with your empty promise to 'try' and stop with the manipulations, but you can't put me off that easily."

She tries again to make him understand. "It was for the best, Clint. You got back what you needed, and we did it without pissing Tony off. Don't you get it? This is a win."

"I don't care about—" He cuts himself off, and starts speaking more calmly. "Okay, I sound like I'm ungrateful. I really appreciate what you did for me, I do."

"So what's the problem?"

"It's just, when you keep me in the dark like that until the very end of a mission, it feels like you think I'm a child who can't handle sensitive information or else he might screw the whole thing up."

She takes in his words, tries them out in her head. She hadn't thought that he might see it that way, but now that she considers it—

"Oh my God." He looks stricken. "That's _exactly_ what you think."

"That's not—"

"Yes, it is." He's starting to pick up steam. "You picked me up at home, specifically at a time when I wouldn't remember anything. You didn't tell me about Bobbi," he starts counting on his fingers, "didn't tell me about quitting the team, didn't tell me that you were going to Tony, didn't tell me what the shot did, didn't tell me _anything_ until it all worked out and there was absolutely no chance that I could ruin it. Because that's who I am, Hawkeye the fuckup who destroys everything he touches."

"Clint."

"Don't you 'Clint' me, _Natasha_! You've _never_ trusted in me. We work next to each other every day, and you _always_ treat me like a toddler. I'm good for hired muscle, but that's it. I can't believe it's taken me so long to see it."

She presses her fingers against her temple, trying to think of what to say to defuse the situation, but she's not—she's not great with friendships or with balancing honesty with sensitivity, and she doesn't know what to say. "I don't think you're a fuckup."

"A ringing endorsement." He shakes his head, looking like he's given up a fight. "Forget it. I… I can't do this right now." He opens the door and walks out without looking back.

 

 

Daisy sits down on her bed, making a space for Bobbi to sit next to her, and starts pulling up windows. She points to one of the screens and says, "I'd like your opinion on this."

It's a report about some sort of project, lots of abbreviations, some familiar and some foreign. Bobbi skims the first few pages, and looks up. "Looks like they're working on a virus."

"How bad?"

"Well, the mice in Group A all died, but only half of the mice in Group B did."

"Oh, good," Daisy says. "I'm really happy for half the mice in Group B."

"Well, in the first batch, all the mice in both groups died."

"Wonderful." Daisy presses her lips together, then says, "So, based on some of the email correspondence here, they're apparently ready for human testing. On the general population."

"On the general population."

"Yup."

"Well, I guess we have our mission—stop _that_ from happening."

"I haven't figured out yet how they're planning on disseminating it. They keep saying that they're trying to convince people to get on board with the plan, but I haven't found out what the plan is. There's a lot to comb through here, so what I'm going to do is split up the emails and reports and copy them over to my other devices, and ask everyone to take a look, make notes on anything that stands out, and hopefully we'll be able to get a clearer picture. I wanted to run the virus stuff by you first. Can you get everyone else in here?"

Bobbi goes out to the hallway. She registers Bucky in the living room and Clint walking down the hall in her direction, but she doesn't see Natasha. "Guys, Daisy has an update for everyone. In her room."

Clint brushes by her without a word or a look, which is very strange, and walks into Daisy's room, leaning against the wall closest to the door. Bucky gives her a kind of apologetic look before coming in, too. She goes back into the room, behind him, and a few seconds later, Natasha walks in, hanging back at the door. Clint shuffles away as Natasha joins them, even though he's nowhere near her.

Bobbi looks back and forth between the three of them. There's definitely a tension there. Clint is visibly upset, and Bucky and Natasha look uncomfortable, and she herself has no idea what's going on, but before she can start trying to figure it out, Daisy speaks up.

"I was able to decrypt the files," Daisy starts, and then she repeats the conversation from a few minutes ago. She finishes up with, "I want each of you to skim all the correspondence and note anything that sticks out—names, places, dates, references, anything."

"All of us?" Bucky says.

"I know it's not what you're used to, but we don't have analysts working in the background here—it's just us. Not to mention, this is a great team with a lot of sharp minds, and I want to take advantage of it."

For some reason, this sets Clint off into a coughing fit.

Daisy pulls out some cables and two tablets and plugs them all into each other, then runs something from her own computer, while they watch. While it runs, she says, "Sorry about the lack of tablets, but I only packed for two lackeys. You'll need to split up into groups of two."

"I'll work with Bobbi," Natasha says quickly.

Clint smiles in an overly cheerful way at Bucky, and says, "I guess we're partners," which makes Bobbi understand that there was some sort of fight between Clint and Natasha, which unsettles her even more.

Daisy hands both groups a few pieces of lined paper from her legal pad, and a few hours later, Bobbi and Natasha have a bunch of code names, and the lunch orders of the entire data entry department of the Jersey branch. The last few emails they've seen are a long chain arguing over what pizza toppings to get, and Bobbi's eyes are glazing over. Natasha taps the "Next" arrow, and the message switches over.

_We're confirmed at two locations for the promo on the 27th. A- 157 St, B-94 St. G & P have been enhanced (unstoppable) and will facilitate._

"What is _this_ ," Natasha says.

At the same time, Bobbi announces, "We've struck gold."

"Is this New York?" Natasha asks. "Could be anywhere."

"We have a lot of references to New York," Bucky says, from the second couch. "What do you have?"

Bobbi reads the email out loud, and there's a bustle of question and comments, all at the same time.

"The twenty-seventh is six days from now."

"What are these two locations?"

"What does 'enhanced' mean?"

"It doesn't sound good."

"What promo is on the twenty-seventh?"

"This would be a lot easier if we had internet access," Bobbi says. The apartment has none, a precaution, since it would be too easy for someone to slip up and log in to a traceable account.

"You're right," Natasha agrees, copying the text of the e-mail onto their paper and folding it up. "I'll go out to a public library and see what links I can get out of this."

"Do you need anyone else for that?" Daisy asks, which receives a bitter chuckle from Clint.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Don't do that. It's just _research_ ," she says, in Clint's direction.

After she leaves, Daisy goes back into her bedroom, and Bucky heads to the kitchen. Bobbi gets up and takes the seat he's vacated next to Clint, who's still glaring daggers at the door.

"Want to talk about it?" she asks.

He turns and looks at her slowly, seeming almost surprised that she's there. For a second, she thinks he's going to open up, but then his face falls, and he shakes his head.

It hurts a little, after he listened to her fears and was there for her, that he won't allow her to do the same for him. This whole "ex" relationship is ambiguously defined and very confusing to navigate. For example, now, she doesn't know whether to push or let it go, but he gets up and walks away, and she decides not to follow. A minute later, she can hear the soft whacking sounds of darts hitting their target.

Eventually, Natasha returns. Clint seems to have mellowed out a bit, and they all meet back up around the coffee table as she tells them what she's found out.

"There's a flu shot promotional event at various clinics across the city on the 27th—get your flu shot, get a free donut, that kind of thing. And the clinics on 157th Street and on 94th Street are both participating."

"So they're replacing flu shots with their virus, and then they're going to track the victims and see how many of them survive?" Bucky asks.

"That's what it looks like," Natasha says.

"That's messed up." He grimaces.

"We still need to find out what 'enhanced' means," Bobbi cuts in. "If it were as simple as shutting down two clinics for one day, with six days notice, we could just hand it over to the police."

Daisy shakes her head. "The police won't touch anything A.I.M. related right now."

"We don't have to say that it's A.I.M," says Clint.

It still doesn't feel like a good idea to Bobbi, getting the police involved. "I don't know. 'Unstoppable' is kind of a red flag."

Daisy holds out the tablets again. "So...who's excited for more research?"


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More relationship drama! Plus, a new member joins the team. Natasha figures out what she wants (what she really really wants), and Bobbi tries to do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thank you to all my readers and commenters! Feedback is <33333

"Ooh, this one is perfect." Bobbi points to a rectangular sheet cake in the display. It's covered with green frosting and adorned with a whole bunch of toy airplanes, and the words "Happy birthday" are spelled out in black cursive letters.

"Uh-huh," Bucky says slowly. "You know it's not his birthday, right?"

"Yeah, but it has airplanes on it."

"Right."

Is he not getting this? "And he's a _pilot_."

"Right," Bucky says again. "Well, I don't know the guy very well, but I was thinking this one looked nice." He indicates a round cake that says "Welcome home" in red letters, decorated with matching red flowers against a white fondant background.

"Oh." Bobbi glances back and forth between the two cakes. Well, that one is nice, too, and it has an appropriate message. But no airplanes. "We could get both?"

He looks at her and raises an eyebrow.

That's when Natasha walks up, shopping bag slung over her shoulder. "Just finished with the decorations. Are you two ready?" Bobbi's sure she's got a guilty expression that says they're not, and Natasha sighs and comes over to the counter. "That one," she says, pointing to the one with the planes. "Excuse me?" she says to the woman behind the counter. "Can you please change this cake so that it says 'Welcome home' on it? My brother just finished this pilot course in Colorado, and this would be perfect for him."

Bobbi watches Natasha work, impressed. She's morphed into an entirely new person, without any props. The convivial, bubbly woman in front of her is someone anyone would want to help out. She's clearly the type of person who runs herself ragged organizing charities and doing favors for her friends, but always with a smile. No matter that this party was Bobbi’s idea.

"Sure thing," the woman answers. She pulls the cake out of the display case and sets it on the counter, then picks up a plastic knife and scrapes the writing right off. She throws the knife into a trash can behind the counter and then walks through a door into the back of the store.

Bobbi's amazed. "You can _do_ that?"

"I didn't know you could do that," Bucky says.

Natasha shrugs. "Me neither."

The woman comes back with an offset spatula in one hand and a cup of water in the other. They watch as she dips the spatula into the water, smooths the frosting down with the spatula and then takes a piping bag off the counter and efficiently spells out the message. She assembles a paper box from a stack, puts the cake inside, prints out a price sticker, and hands the whole thing over. "Here you go."

"Thanks so much," Natasha says.

They get back to the apartment with about an hour to spare before Rhodey's set to show up. Clint is still being weird, and she resolves to get him out of his funk at some point, but it'll need to wait, because of all there is to do. Daisy and Clint have already started cleaning, but there's still a lot that needs to get done: blowing up balloons, hanging up streamers, putting out drinks and disposable cups, plates, forks, and knives on the pass-through and on the coffee table, setting up the grill on the balcony, moving shoes and clothing to the bedrooms where they belong, sweeping, and, for some reason, scrubbing the toilet.

Rhodey shows up at one, right on time, and laughs when he sees that they've thrown him a party. "I didn't know you'd be so excited to see me!"

"We've been locked up in this place with only each other for company for the past five days, and we're about to murder each other," Bobbi says, only half-kidding. "You got here just in time."

He laughs. "Hey, Bobbi."

He moves in for a hug, which she gladly returns. "Hi, Rhodey."

"You gave us all quite a scare," he says.

"It's what I do best."

"Well, it wasn't very nice."

Clint steps in and takes her place. "Great to see you, Rhodey."

"You, too, Hawk."

"Are you staying with us?" Clint asks.

"Not this time, sorry. My aunt insisted—well, my parents don't live around here anymore, but I told my aunt I was visiting, and she insisted I stay with her. I get the impression that you're trying not to raise attention to yourselves, so I'm going to use this as an excuse to catch up with my family. But I'm yours during the day."

He greets the rest of them, with a kiss on the cheek for Natasha, a handshake for Bucky, and a nod for Daisy.

"Glad to have you on board," Daisy says to him.

"I'm not sure exactly what I signed up for, to be honest," Rhodey responds. "Is this Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Neither, actually."

"A plain old team-up, then. Well, as long as we're on the side of the good guys. And speaking of good guys, Daisy, I have a message for you from Tony. He says next time you need something from him, just ask." He pulls out a phone-shaped device from his pocket and hands it over. "Super simple, super secure. He whipped it up in, like, half an hour."

This would be a good time to bring out the cake, Bobbi decides, and so she goes into the kitchen and takes it out of the fridge. Getting back through the doorway with the box in her hands is a little tougher with Clint standing right in the doorway, her back to her, so whispers, "Excuse me," but he doesn't seem to hear. Fair enough. She gives him a little nudge with the box, but nothing. Giving up, she turns ninety degrees and tries to squeeze through, but there's not enough room, and she fumbles with the cake.

That seems to wake him up. He turns and catches the box at the same time that she gets a solid grip on it, and they make eye contact. It's awkward—all day, he's been polite but entirely distant, and she doesn't understand why. He's not himself, probably due to the fight he had with Natasha yesterday, but _she_ didn't have anything to do with that, as far as she knows.

She's not about to let her imagination run wild, and she's especially not going to think about what may have happened during those few days when he and Nat were traveling alone—well, no, she knows better. Even if there are romantic feelings there, based on Clint's friendship with both Natasha and Bucky, he wouldn't make a move while she's in this state; he would consider that taking advantage, and she knows Clint. He may not be virtuous in the old-fashioned meaning of the term, but he's ethical.

If Clint and Natasha have feelings for each other, it's not her business. And if they don't… well, that's not her business, either.

He holds the cake out to her, but doesn't say anything.

"What's with you?" she whispers.

"I don't want to talk about it," he says, shaking his head.

"Of course you don't."

Clint sighs. "Please leave me alone, Bobbi."

"Fine." She rolls her eyes and shoves past him, pasting a smile on her face as she sets the cake down on the coffee table.

"Aww, you shouldn't have," Rhodey says.

"Uh, okay, but then we wouldn't have _cake_."

Bucky picks up a knife from the cutlery laid out on the coffee table and starts cutting up the cake, distributing the pieces on paper plates. Daisy gets the first piece, then goes outside to fire up the barbecue, and once they all have cake, they follow her out, using Bucky's room as a passageway. The folding chairs are set up, and there's a table with salad, and Daisy has steaks and skewers of vegetables on the grill.

"So," Rhodey says as they all take seats, "what's this I hear about the bad guys trying to take over the world again?"

They tell him what they know, which is that A.I.M. will be using a flu shot drive as a cover for them to spread some sort of infectious disease to unsuspecting New Yorkers, a virus A.I.M. is engineering which they don't know much about, but they do know that it caused a lot of mice to die.

"I'm going through the notes here in order to find out more about what it's actually supposed to do," Bobbi says. "Either way, we don't want it getting out, especially if A.I.M. does."

"And some 'G' and 'P' will be enhanced-slash-unstoppable in order to make sure it goes down like they want it to," Natasha adds.

"Unstoppable?" Rhodey repeats. "No one's unstoppable. What do they mean by that?"

"We have no clue," Daisy says from her spot at the grill. "Unfortunately."

"Maybe they've got super-strength suits?" Bucky says.

Bobbi shakes her head. "Would you line up for a flu shot from someone in a super-strength suit?"

"Good point."

"There are a lot of options," Natasha says. "Maybe they're mutants, maybe they got their hands on some MGH so they can pretend to be mutants for the day… who knows, maybe they've just been working out really hard and drinking protein shakes. We should be ready for anything."

"You know," Daisy says, "Before I left S.H.I.E.L.D., we had rumors that A.I.M. was somehow receiving tech from the future, from A.I.M. in the future. If that's true, then they could have something we've never even heard of."

"Can we go back and try to get more intel?" Rhodey asks.

"The problem is, right now we have a date and a place. If they find out that we're on to them, they can just change their plans, and we're back to square one."

"So we just show up and hope we've got enough firepower," Bucky says.

"Six of us, two of them," Clint points out. "Who are G and P, anyway? Are these initials or code names?"

"We could check the rosters for the clinics," Natasha says.

Daisy nods. "Good idea. Someone want to make a library stop tonight?"

Rhodey looks around. "No internet here? I can look up whatever you need at my aunt's house."

"That'd be great," Daisy says.

"Happy to. This cake is excellent, by the way. The planes are a nice touch."

 

 

Most of the afternoon goes smoothly. The trouble starts when they're done eating. Rhodey is standing up, leaning against the building, indulging their curiosity about his budding romance with Carol Danvers. Clint is sitting closest to the little patio table they set up, and Natasha asks him to pass her a napkin.

Clint very obviously turns his head away and says to Rhodey, "How long will she be in space for?"

Rhodey looks back and forth between the two of them, and says, "Uh, I don't—you never really know for sure, but a few months?"

"Napkin?" Natasha repeats.

"Oh, that's not so long," Clint says, and everyone is looking at him now.

Natasha walks around him to get the napkin for herself, and huffs, "What, you're not talking to me now?"

"Are you _kidding_ me?" Clint says. "I've been not talking to you for over a day. You haven't noticed until now?"

Everyone is staring. Bobbi is mortified. Growing up in SoCal did a lot to counteract the strict manners that her Southern transplant parents tried to instill in her, but this is a _party_ , it was _her_ idea, and _everyone is staring_.

"Maybe I don't expect the silent treatment from a grown adult," Natasha hisses.

"Oh, am I an adult now?"

This is a disaster. Looking around the room, she can see Rhodey confused, Bucky concerned, and Daisy overwhelmed. Bobbi herself has the strongest urge to put her hands over her ears and scream until they shut up. Which might explain what she does next. She knows better, but she's in a bad mood, and their respective bad moods are playing off of hers and making everything worse. 

Clint and Natasha are facing each other with murderous looks, both of them about to fly off the handle, and Bobbi rolls her eyes and mutters into the tense silence, "When will you guys just get a room already?"

She regrets it the second it comes out of her mouth. Natasha looks at her, and she just looks _tired_ , and she spins on her heel and walks off into their shared room.

"What the hell, Bobbi," Clint says.

"What the hell, yourself," she snaps back. "We're trying to have a _nice time_ here, and you two and your self-absorbed lovers' spat are ruining the whole thing! Rhodey came all this way—"

"Um," Rhodey interrupts. "Can I be left out of this?"

She stops, realizing that she's only making it worse. _Fuck_.

"Bobbi." Daisy motions for her to come over to the door near her office/room. She slides the door open, and the two of them step inside. Bobbi slides the door closed behind them and prepares herself for a dressing-down.

"As your boss—" Daisy starts.

"You're not my boss."

"I feel like I should let you know, you're being a little shit."

"Wow, if you were my boss, that would be so inappropriate."

"Really? Huh. No wonder everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. hated me."

That makes Bobbi laugh, because literally nobody at S.H.I.E.L.D. hates Daisy. Even Maria Hill, deep down somewhere in the recesses of her heart.

"Thank you for your candor," Bobbi says. She's calmed down, and now she's embarrassed by her outburst. She might as well have worn a red and white name tag that says, _Hello, My Name Is 'The Jealous Ex'._ Damn it, and she's been trying so hard to get those feelings under control.

They go back outside, and Bobbi apologizes to the group, sans Natasha, who's still inside. "I just wanted this to go smoothly. I'm sorry for flying off the handle."

"Sorry for ruining your party," Clint says in response, and the conversation flares up again.

Neither of them are being completely honest, but it's enough to smooth over the cracks, for now.

 

 

 

Natasha takes a few minutes for herself before going back outside. When she comes out, everyone is cleaning up, pretending that there was no blowup earlier, and she joins in on the effort. Rhodey leaves around five, promising to be back tomorrow. They all end up kind of doing their own thing for the rest of the day, their camaraderie fractured by the events of the past few days.

In the evening, Natasha goes out for a run, needing to clear her mind. The Ben Franklin Bridge is near enough, and it's supposed to have an amazing view, so she changes into leggings, a sports bra, and a t-shirt, and heads east.

The problem is, she wants the problem to be everyone else. Bucky has her at an advantage, but he won't _take_ advantage, and the idea that he thinks of her as someone who needs to be protected is maddening. Bobbi's way out of line, considering the fact that Natasha practically gift-wrapped Clint and delivered him to her doorstep. And Clint himself—well, he's always had problems with his ego, and he's acting like a child at the same time that he's accusing her of treating him like a child, making it impossible for her to win.

The view is really nice. The bridge is all lit up in blue, with charming little lamp posts along the walkway, and the Delaware is calm and serene, a contrast to the bright lights of the structure and of the city ahead.

It's easy to lay her problems on everyone else. The truth is, that Bucky's just trying to do the right thing in a bad situation, Bobbi has a legitimate reason to be angry with her, even if it's not what she thinks it is, and Clint… maybe he has a point. Maybe she does subconsciously underestimate him. Maybe it wasn't right of her to install technology into his body without giving him the entire picture, even if she had his best interests at heart.

If she's honest with herself, what bothers her the most is that Clint has what she wants, and he's not _doing_ anything about it. There's nothing holding him and Bobbi back from each other, except their own insecurities. But then… what's holding _her_ back from what she wants?

It's not a long run, to Jersey and back, but it's enough to make some sense of the thoughts rattling around in her mind. By the time she gets back to the apartment, she knows what she has to do. She goes straight to her room and showers, then puts regular clothing on, despite the late hour, and goes back out to the living room.

Bobbi is leaning over the pass-through between the kitchen and living room, her back to the rest of the room. She has Daisy's tablet in front of her next to a notebook, and she's rolling a pen between her fingers as she engages Bucky in conversation. They're speaking in an undertone, and she can't make out the words. Daisy and Clint are standing on the other end of the living room, by the bookshelves, talking strategy—when to go to the clinics, where and when to intercept the shipments of drugs, how to split up the group to cover both locations.

She clears her throat and interrupts. "I want to get my memories back."

Everyone stops what they're doing to turn and look at her. Bobbi's pen rolls onto the floor, making a clacking sound, but all eyes are on Natasha.

"None of you have to help me. I know we're busy trying to stop A.I.M. from turning New York into an infectious diseases ward, and we don't have a ton of time or resources, but this is something I want to do, and if anyone does have extra time or brainpower to help out… I would appreciate it."

"I'm in," Clint says immediately.

"Thank you," she says, meeting his eyes, and just like that, they're friends again.

Bobbi nods. "Me, too, whatever you need. Do you have any ideas to start with?"

"My first thought was to try Tony's machine," Natasha says. "The first stage, which Clint and Rhodey skipped, the part where it locks up your memories. It has some fancy algorithms for finding hidden memories, so that they can be extra-secure, and maybe it'll be able to dig up mine. And then we could run the decryption, and at that point, my brain would have the pointers to the memories, so I'd be able to kind of reassemble everything."

"Would that work?" Bobbi asks.

"There's only one way to find out."

"Tony didn't bring it up as an option at the time," Bucky points out. "We consulted with him, he was part of the team that worked on restoring your other memories, the ones that did come back. But he didn't say anything about this. And… maybe he forgot about it, or maybe he knew it wouldn't work."

"What's more likely?" Bobbi asks. They all look at Bucky, who sighs.

"Honestly?" he says. "I don't know. You would think that he would have mentioned it if there'd been a chance, but there's so much going on in that head of his that things slip all the time. He can never keep track of all his inventions." Even as he says it, though, it's obvious that he doesn't believe it—he just doesn't want to be the one to let them down.

"It's not a matter of time or resources," Daisy says, changing the subject. "It's the risk. Natasha, I was there, when you were brainwashed; I sat in on plenty of meetings. S.H.I.E.L.D. tried everything that they safely could. They got everything back except for… well, the stuff still missing. I think you need to stop while you're ahead. To go further—it's just not good strategy."

"With all due respect—" Clint starts, his tone indicating that he's not about to say anything respectful.

"I know it sounds harsh," Daisy continues, cutting Clint off, "but the things I've seen—brains can snap so easily, and they can’t always be put back together. You should count yourself lucky that they got you back as much as they did."

Natasha narrows her eyes at her. "I refuse to count myself lucky for being a pawn, _again_ , in some man’s power trip."

"Fine, so you're not lucky. You were actually pretty damn unfortunate; is that better? But it could always be worse. Sure, if we had a cosmic cube lying around like they did for this one," she indicates Bucky, "but we don't. This is your _life_ we're talking about."

"Her life, which was stolen from her," Clint protests.

"That's enough," Natasha says. "Daisy, you don't feel comfortable? Fine." She's disappointed, but she'll make do. Daisy's not the one whose opinion matters the most here, anyway. Natasha turns to Bucky, and leans on her bravado. "How about you?"

He doesn't answer right away, and it looks like he's trying to find a diplomatic way to avoid giving an answer.

"This is what you want?" he asks, finally.

"I already said what I want," she says. "What do you think?"

"I think—" He looks away. "I don't think I can't be objective about this. I think that you shouldn't take me into consideration when making this choice."

And for some reason, that's the last straw.

"So you don't care?" she asks, voice rising. "Take it or leave it, it doesn't make a difference?"

"That's not what I said—"

"You know, I'm getting really sick of watching everyone here _not_ go after they want, because apparently being a superhero means that you're never allowed to be happy, because it's not enough that you spend twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week saving the world, you're not really a hero unless you're miserable while you doing it." She pauses for breath, then continues, "I'm telling you all what I want. I'm jumping in feet-first, and if my brain gets scrambled, then so be it, because at least I _tried_." She glares at everyone in the room, one at a time. When she gets to Clint, he has this kind of self-righteous look on his face, as if they're on the same team, and she snaps, "Don't even get me started on _you_ , Clint Barton."

She’s never lashed out at her teammates like that before, and everyone is staring, but she's _right_ and they all know it.

"I'll go with you," Daisy says. "Seriously, you've won me over."

Natasha nods. "Okay, then."

"I'll even call Tony." Daisy grins. "Face my fears and all that."

 

 

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Bucky asks, catching her in the hallway.

She looks at him warily. Between the new closeness from two nights ago and his current ambivalence about her getting her memories back, she doesn't know how she feels about him right now, but she's willing to listen. "Go ahead."

"I was an ass."

She shrugs.

"First of all, I want to say, that you are… you're amazing, and intelligent, and caring, and—you're so many wonderful things, and when Novokov brainwashed you, took all your years as a hero away from you, it was—I was so scared."

Natasha nods as if she has any idea what he's talking about. She doesn't really remember what those days were like, from the time that Novokov was stopped through the end of the treatments.

"But then you recovered. All of your memories were coming back so quickly, you seemed more like yourself by the hour. And I started to relax, I was so sure that things were going well. And then, suddenly, everything just stalled. You were completely yourself again, except. You didn't know me. And I know you don't know what that means to me, but it… Anyway, I held out hope, through all the treatments, the therapies, everything. I _knew_ you, Natalia, and I knew that you would come back to me."

 _Oh._ She knows the end of this story, and it's not happy. 

"But you didn't," he continues. "And eventually I had to accept it. That was the hardest part—the acceptance. And if I dare to get my hopes up again, and then… and then nothing works, and—I remember what that was like, and I think it would kill me to go through it again."

Apparently, all her rules have been tossed to the wayside, and it reinforces how important the rules were, because this hurts. She's starting to understand what she meant to him, and it's terrifying, the idea that it might have gone both ways. It's like nothing she's ever known. But she's glad he told her. "I understand," she says. "You don't have to be involved in this."

"Oh, no, of course I'll be involved."

"But what about what you just said?"

"What about it? If you're going after your memories, how can I not help? I'm just trying to explain why I came off as...unenthusiastic, before. But of course I'll help." He reaches for her hand, and she lets him take it in his. The metal is firm but warm, and he runs his thumb over her fingers.

"Thank you," she says.

"Of course." 

 

 

The next one to face her is Clint, who knocks on her half-open door as she's brushing her teeth. She spits and rinses, then waves him in.

He stands in the middle of the room, and she notices his eyes flickering to Bobbi's bed, and then he rubs the back of his head as he looks at her.

"So…." he says. "It may, kind of, in some way, be possible that I overreacted."

She raises her eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not cool with the fact that you did something to my brain and didn't tell me the whole truth about what it does."

"That's fair."

"But I know that you thought you were doing right by me, and I should have given you the benefit of the doubt."

"Thank you."

"And what I said before, about…" his voice trails off, but she knows what he means.

"Clint, I don't withhold information from you because I think that you can't be trusted with it."

"I know." He surprises her by winking. "It's because you don't think anyone can be trusted with it."

"It's how I am. You can't take it as a personal affront when I keep secrets."

"And how I am, is someone who doesn't like being kept in the dark."

"I know," she says, and then, "I'm… sorry."

He laughs. "Apologizing! I wish I'd gotten a video of that!"

She goes on, trying to find the words that eluded her the day before. "You're one of my oldest and closest friends, but I am much older than you, and I've been working this way for a very long time. I don't say that as an expression of superiority, it's just… 'old dog, new tricks.' I'll try to take your preferences into account in the future."

"So I guess this isn't the last time we'll have this fight?" he asks.

"Does that mean we're not fighting anymore?"

"Of course! Life's too short. Well, for some of us." He holds out his arms. "Come on, hug it out."

She can't help herself from smiling. "When have I _ever_ hugged it out?"

"Hugging it out is the best, you don't even know," Clint says. "One day. One day you'll see."

"Ha. If you say so."

He turns to go.

"Wait. Clint. There's one more thing."

 

 

Bobbi's the only one left in the living room. After finishing up with a few more reports, she puts everything together in a pile, then turns off all of the lights except for the one in the hallway, then lies down on the couch and switches on the TV. She flips through the channels, landing on The Big Bang Theory, which is her favorite show to hate-watch and the perfect distraction right now.

For a while, she gets lost in the caricatures and the dumb jokes juxtaposing scientists and blond girls, and then there are footsteps behind her, and she looks up to see Clint. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm done talking to Natasha and your room is free."

She's not sure whether he's just being polite by letting her know that she can go back into the room, or making a snarky reference to her 'get a room' comment from earlier. She regrets letting that one slip, wishes she could take it back. But all she says is, "Thanks."

He looks at the empty spot next to her for a second, but he doesn't sit down. Instead, he just taps his fingers on the back of the couch. After about ten seconds of that, he says, "Did I shut you out?"

"What?"

"Today. Yesterday. When I was fighting with Nat."

"Um. I guess? Either that, or I crossed a boundary. It's hard to tell."

"It is, isn't it? And here I thought you were teasing me," he says. "Are we going to be okay?"

The irony of her ex-husband asking her if they're going to be okay almost makes her laugh, and she can tell from his sheepish smile that he gets it, too.

"'Always do, don't we?'" she quotes at him. It's what he said to her back when—when they'd met up again after being separated during a mission, right after their relationship had fallen apart for the last time.

He closes his eyes, and she's not sure what that means. The blue-tinted light from the television is harsh against his features, and the shadows make him seem farther away than he is.

Then he opens them, and he has a small, sad smile on his face. "'Night, Birdie."

The nickname hurts. He hasn't used it in a long time, and it feels like a childhood memory of a favorite tree that's been cut down. 

His footsteps fade as he walks away. She should get up, go back to her room, face Natasha, and apologize for being snide. That's what she should do.

Instead, she waits until she hears Clint's door closing, gets up and turns off the light, and goes back to the couch, back to the show, where she can get lost in the jokes and the laugh tracks, not having to worry about all the people she's hurt today.

When the picture starts to swim in front of her, she turns it off, and then it all comes rushing back in.

The thing is, she's stable now. She knows who she is, she knows what she wants—which is to be a hero without sacrificing her independence, without continuously taking orders from Maria Hill or Nick Fury or even Steve Rogers. And she thinks she can make that happen.

But Natasha's speech inspired her, and she has to admit that she also wants love. She wants that intimate partnership with one other person with whom she can retreat into a little world with, at the end of the day. Someone who knows her and loves her and roots for her, and whom she can do the same for in return.

She refuses to let herself think his name, at first.

Someone. Someone would be nice.

It would be so much easier if Bucky were available. He would probably make a good boyfriend.

_But you don’t really want Bucky. What you want is some sort of buffer for your feelings for Clint. So that when Clint and Natasha end up together, it'll hurt less if you've convinced yourself that you'd rather have Bucky, anyway._

_Why should it hurt? What if Clint_ is _attracted to Natasha? So what? Would that be the worst thing in the world?_

_He dated her first. She’s just like you, only better._

_You’re being ridiculous. Natasha isn't the source of your self-esteem issues. And Natasha doesn’t even want Clint. Why would she be going through so much trouble to restore her memories of Bucky and then turn around and hook up with Clint?_

_Why shouldn’t she? She doesn’t owe Bucky a relationship, and it’s perfectly plausible that she could want to have all of her memories for the simple reason that they’re her memories, even if she wants to be with someone else._

_If she’s so much wonderful, and he likes her so much, why shouldn’t he be with her?_

_He can do what he wants._

_Of course he can; that’s not in question. The question is, what do you want?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about the timeline: in canon, in addition to starting a relationship with Carol, some pretty heavy stuff goes down with Rhodey's family after he leaves the Secret Avengers, in the Iron Patriot solo. For the purposes of this fic, that stuff hasn't happened yet (or maybe it won't happen at all—this is canon divergent, after all).


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi and Natasha talk about certain things they have on their minds, and Natasha takes a sanctioned trip to Tony's lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks for sticking with me! I'm getting all wistful about being closer to the end of this fic than I am to the beginning; I'm going to miss it. But I do have two one-shots set in this universe lined up for afterwards, so I'm looking forward to that.
> 
> Special thank you to the /r/fanfiction subreddit for their advice on putting this chapter together.

Bobbi wakes up as the sun starts peeking over the horizon, the glow of the drapes on their east-facing window pulling her from her sleep. Her neck is stiff from sleeping on the couch, punishing her for her bratty behavior yesterday. The couch's patchwork quilt is tangled around her legs, and there's a sour taste in her mouth from not having brushed her teeth.

She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep, but then one of the bedroom doors squeaks open, and she opens her eyes a crack in time to see Natasha walk into the room, still in her pajamas.

Bobbi rubs her eyes. "Hey."

"Hey." Natasha approaches and rests her arms on the back of the couch, leaning over. "You never came in last night. What are you doing out here?"

"Fell asleep watching TV." Which is not technically untrue.

"That's too bad. It was hard for me to sleep without all the snoring."

Bobbi yawns, covering her mouth and flipping the bird with the same hand.

"Want coffee?" Natasha offers, standing back up.

"Yeah, thanks. I’m getting up."

She sits up on the couch, stretching her arms over her head, and forces herself to stand. The taste in her mouth makes her grimace, so she sneaks out to the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she comes back, the aroma of coffee fills the room, and the light in the living room is a little less gray, making her feel slightly more ready to face the morning.

"Milk? Sugar?" comes Natasha's voice from the kitchen.

Bobbi sits back onto the couch, wrapping herself back up in the quilt. "Milk, no sugar." She's just settling in when Natasha comes back into the living room with two full cups. Natasha hands Bobbi hers and sits down next to her on the couch. 

Before Natasha can say anything, Bobbi blurts it out. "I need to apologize," she says. "I’ve been really obnoxious."

Natasha takes a sip. "I forgive you."

"What, just like that?"

"I'm the Black Widow, if you'll remember," she says with a half-grin. "I've had worse things done to me than an insecure friend accuse me of having an affair with her ex-husband right in front of my…does English have a word for a former lover whose existence was erased from your memory?"

"Does Russian?"

"Unfortunately not. So I take it you've sorted out your feelings about your archer?"

"I guess I have," Bobbi admits, a little afraid to be talking about this out loud.

"Then why the hell are you out here talking to me instead of crawling into that twin bed in that room? That's what I would do if I were you."

 _Really_. Bobbi raises her eyebrows. "Well, Bucky's door is right over there, so put up or shut up, sister."

Natasha winces. "Last time I tried something like that, he turned me down."

"Ha! And they say he doesn't have super-strength."

"Thank you for the compliment. Also, you should tell Clint."

The thought of it makes her want to throw up. "I don’t know if I can. My relationship, however you define it, with Clint, is hanging on by a thread, and I don’t…." She looks down into her coffee, pretends she's alone in the room, and speaks her fear out loud. "What if he says that we need to move on, and the only way we can do it is by cutting that thread?"

Natasha tilts her head down for a moment, tapping her fingers on her thigh. Bobbi waits for her response, the coil of anxiety in her belly tightening further as the seconds pass.

Finally, Natasha then looks up at her and says, "You weren't there when we thought you were dead. Or when Clint quit the team after that mission, because of what Hill did and what she made him do to you. For all the good it did him. But he took a stand for you." Natasha sits up straighter and declares, "I don't know what's going to happen with the two of you, but I know Clint Barton, and he would never cut the thread."

It helps, a little.

Natasha puts her mug down on the coffee table and shifts so that she's facing her. "So, if we're apologizing," she starts, and Bobbi cuts her off.

"Yelena," she says, bringing up another topic she hasn't had the guts to mention yet.

Natasha looks confused. "What?"

Bobbi thinks back to the moment where she placed the image inducer on the younger Black Widow, giving her Bobbi’s own appearance and causing an A.I.M. sniper to target Yelena instead of herself. The fear in the younger woman’s eyes when she realized her fate. "You were close with her, weren’t you? And I caused her death."

Natasha's eyes cloud over, but she shakes her head. "No, she was trying to kill you, and you did what you needed to in order to stay alive. I tried to warn her away from the lifestyle. I wish she had made different choices. But I have enough of my own actions to second-guess; I can’t take responsibility for hers, too. No, I actually need to apologize to you."

"For what?" Bobbi asks, drinking the last of her now-cold coffee and then putting the empty cup down on the table.

"For leaving you behind when I knew that the memory Hill was giving us was fake," Natasha says.

It feels like someone dumped a pitcher of water on her head. "Oh. I didn't even realize..."

"You would have put two and two together eventually," Natasha says, and sighs heavily. "So I decided to come clean before you did. And now you know: I'm a fraud. I made a split-second decision not to blow my cover, and I...I'm an excellent spy, but not a very good friend. It wasn't a selfless act of heroism that inspired me to get Clint out of there and to look for you, it was guilt. I've been running off guilt these entire past few weeks."

"Hmmmm." She's taken aback, but more about the fact that she hadn't figured it out immediately when Natasha told them about the injections than at Natasha's actions. "You didn't know that Hill had wiped my mind, did you?"

"No, but I knew something wasn't right. If it had been your choice to stay, she would have just told us so."

Bobbi thinks about it, trying to work herself up into some sort of righteous fury, but it's just not coming. "So, I guess I'm supposed to be mad at you."

"I would think so."

"I don't want to be," Bobbi says, simply. "I've been so angry lately, and it's exhausting. I don't want to be mad at you." She sniffles, and to her mortification, she chokes up as she says, "I just want to be your friend."

To her surprise, Natasha embraces her, and says, "Me, too."

"Good." Bobbi leans into her, the quilt around her shoulders and Natasha's arms making her feel warm and safe, stripping away the embarrassment of displaying her vulnerability in front of a personal hero like the Black Widow.

And that's the moment when she realizes what Natasha is to her. Not a target for her to always fall short of, not a finish line she can never reach, not some stronger and faster and more enigmatic ideal version of her, but just...a role model. A person. Someone who can teach her a few things, but also a human being with her own fears and shortcomings.

She doesn't hear the door or the footsteps, but then Daisy is standing by the couch in a powder blue sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants, crossing her arms.

"Hey, shove over," Daisy says. "I want to get in on this."

Bobbi laughs, and the two of them move over, and Natasha puts an arm around Daisy and pulls her into the group hug.

 

 

There's absolutely no connection, but the conversation she and Bobbi had this morning makes Natasha feel optimistic about this trip today. She's gotten her shit off her chest, given and received absolution, and now she feels like the universe is on her side, and this is going to work.

Of course, she knows better than to trust in that kind of feeling.

When everyone is up, Daisy calls up Tony on her new secure line to coordinate the trip. At some point during the conversation, Tony must ask how many people they'll be, because Daisy raises her voice and repeats the question to the room. 

"We can't all go," Clint says. "Someone's got to stick around and wait for Rhodey to show up."

"Right," Natasha says. "You and Bobbi can do that." Behind his back, Bobbi widens her eyes and shakes her head, but she ignores her. "That okay?" she asks Clint. 

Clint turns to look at Bobbi, who pastes a smile on and says, "No problem."

"No problem," Clint repeats, turning back to her.

"Three people," Daisy tells Tony. They talk for a few more minutes, then she hangs up and addresses the group. "Tony's remotely granted us access to the lab for the next twelve hours. I've got the address written down. We might as well leave now, right?"

Natasha and Bucky agree, and the three of them are ready to go, including Bucky's tote bag full of comics, in under ten minutes.

"Have fun!" Clint calls after them as they leave.

As she closes the door behind her, she can head Bobbi's incredulous, "'Have fun?'"

 

 

"So, this is what Stark's lab looks like from the outside," Bucky says.

It's an old warehouse, a faded green paint job that's half peeled off, dusty windows, and empty smoke stacks. Much less impressive than its inside, but at least it doesn't attract attention. Still, if you know what to look for, it's a little off—none of the windows are broken or open, and she's sure there's extra security behind them.

They get out of the car and walk up to the front door. There's a biometric panel next to the door, and Daisy places her palm against it. Right away the lock clicks open. She opens the door, and they all go inside, each of them passing through a green light which performs a retinal scan on the way in.

"Let's do this, then," Natasha says, and she finds the machine and turns it on. She programs in the full sequence, then sits down in the chair.

"You ready?" Daisy asks.

Is she ready?

What if she finds out something she doesn't want to know—what if it's all a trick, and there's nothing to know? What if Bucky loves her deeply and she didn't return the feelings? What if he didn't understand her, like Clint, or undervalued her, like Matt, or some other issue that she doesn't know because she doesn't remember, and she's been building her hopes on something too good to be true?

Bucky's looking at her, now, like he knows what she's thinking, and he smiles and says, "You're doing this for you, remember?"

It's true, she is doing it for her. Even if their relationship wasn't everything that everyone's saying it is, those memories _belong_ to her, and she's going to reclaim them.

"Ready," Natasha says, and Daisy starts strapping her in. "I just need to disable the mind-protection program." Otherwise, this machine won't be able to do much to her mind. It's easy enough to disable it temporarily, by speaking the sequence out loud. "Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Deactivate shielding. Three fifty eight ampersand talc." It doesn't really matter if they hear it, since the sensors also check to make sure that the voice matches hers and that her voice box movements match up with the sound. 

"Have a nice nap, Widow," Daisy says. "We'll see you soon."

 

 

The door closes, and they're left alone. Bobbi feels a pit in her stomach, but Clint doesn't seem to notice.

"Want to watch a movie?" he asks.

She's tempted to say yes, but putting this off won't make it any easier. "Um, actually, can we talk?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Great." She walks into the kitchen, sits on the counter, and he follows, standing next to her, looking curious.

She swallows. "So. I blew up at you yesterday, and I want to explain."

"Don't worry about it," he says. "You weren't the only one out of line. I know that I was being rude and insensitive, and I don't mind you putting me in my place when I do that." He rubs the back of his neck, which had gone pink. "I just don't understand why you said it the way that you did, like you're trying to push me and Nat together."

"I'm not trying to do that," she says. "I think the reason I said those things is because I want to—I’ve been trying to desensitize myself to the image of you with her—because the idea of you two together actually bothered me a lot."

He looks at her like she has two heads. "What idea? It was your idea."

"Yeah, well, maybe, but come on, she’s—" she stops herself, remembering why she’s doing this, "—not the issue here. The issue is me, and how hard I’ve been working to convince myself that I’m okay with us not being together, that I’m okay with you dating other people."

He crosses his arms and takes a step backwards. "What are you talking about?"

Not exactly the reaction she was hoping for.

Meanwhile, he's starting to get worked up. "‘Convince yourself you’re okay with’...? Who am I even dating right now? What am I being accused of?"

"I'm not _accusing_ ," she says, but he's not listening. 

"If you're talking about Jessica, I did take your feelings into account, I even checked with you to make sure it wouldn't be too weird—"

"Well, what was I supposed to say?" Bobbi says. "‘No, you can’t date your teammate even though you’re single and she's single and everyone's fucking _single_ —’"

"Oh, no, you are not turning me into the bad guy here. Like I'm some asshole who dumped you and then went around sleeping with everyone—"

"Well, if you want to be technical about it—"

"When _you_ were the one who didn't want to stay married in the first place!" He ends the sentence on a shout, then blinks and looks away. He takes a deep breath, then walks over to the table and sits down, looking at the wall.

"Oh," she says softly, stunned.

When he speaks again, he’s calm, but he's still facing away from her. "I don't _blame_ you for it."

"Oh," she repeats.

"I know that I'm an idiot and that I don't deserve you."

"Wait, _what_?"

"And I'm impulsive and thoughtless and I let you down over and over again."

This conversation—this is not how she expected this to go, not at all. "Clint, that’s not—"

"But _you_ gave up on _me_ first."

She feels that like a punch in the stomach, like she's getting the wind knocked out of her.

"Yeah, maybe I walked away," he continues. "But from what? Another attempt to work things out, to see if you could forgive me for something I'll never be able to forgive myself for? It was just a matter of time."

That's not how she remembers it at all. The way that she remembers it, she'd come back from the Skrull homeworld traumatized, all skittish and distant, and she had pushed away every effort he'd made to help her until he finally stopped trying. The incident he's talking about—when the Phantom Rider had drugged and raped her, when she'd let him die without lifting a finger, when Clint found out and fixated on the killing, not even trying to understand what she'd been through—it was bad, but it's ancient history, water under the bridge. In the years afterwards, he'd changed, apologized, supported her retroactively, and she's long forgiven him for that.

While she was zoning out, he stood up and started talking again, pacing while he speaks, and she hones in on his words. "...couldn't talk to you about it. It was about her lying to me about the injection before she gave it to me." He's talking about his fight with Natasha. "I accused her of treating me like an irresponsible screwup—don't say anything—I didn't tell you because I was afraid that you would pity me, because she was right."

"Clint…"

"It's one thing when Tasha does it, when she gives me that 'You're a lovable idiot and the lovable part is only occasionally' look, but _you_ …" he finally looks at her, and the sadness in his eyes breaks her heart a little bit more. "I couldn't bear it if you felt the same way."

"I _don't_ feel that way," she says fiercely. "I've never thought you were an idiot."

"If you did, I would have no defense."

"Oh, Clint," she says. "Why do you do this to yourself?"

"I don't know."

She wants to approach him, wants to put a hand on his shoulder, but she's afraid that it'll scare him away, so she crosses her arms to suppress the urge.

"You have a list, don't you. Of ways you think you failed me."

He starts rattling them off, proving her point. "Well, there's the obvious, of course. And all the doubling down...my fucking ego. Should have left the WCA myself instead of trying to make you leave, just because it hurt too damn much. I didn't even _notice_ when you were replaced by an imposter, and then I let you—her, but I thought it was you—die saving my sorry hide, I got your mom shot, I pushed you too hard, and now _this_." Leaving her behind on A.I.M. island, which they're already agreed wasn't his fault, but it's like he's looking for things to blame himself for.

"So, that's what you associate me with?" Bobbi asks, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "When somebody says, 'Bobbi,' the first thing you think of is your regrets? The things you did wrong?" 

He looks sheepish. "Maybe not the first thing."

She almost grins. "That's a—"

"That's a sex reference, yeah." He winces. "The, uh, the thing with—never mind. Please don't slap me."

"Why would I slap you?"

"I don't _know_ ," he says again, desperately. "I don't know _anything_."

She's about to open her mouth, when the conversation is interrupted by the front door opening.

Rhodey's voice calls out, "Hello? Where is everyone?"

"In here," Bobbi says.

Rhodey appears in the doorway. "Hey, guys. Where's everyone else?"

"Oh, you've missed a lot," Clint says, and he starts explaining. They catch Rhodey up on Natasha's newest side mission, skipping over the more dramatic parts.

Rhodey stands up by the wall next to the doorway while they talk, crossing his arms and listening. "And that's where they are right now? The lab?"

"Right."

"And in the meantime, what's our job?"

"Well, I suggested watching a movie," Clint says.

Rhodey gives her a look, like _Is he serious_? She shrugs.

Clint sighs and goes over to the table, sitting down. "I guess we should be making plans for A.I.M."

They join him at the table, sitting on either side of him. "Well, the kind-of good news is that I found the employee lists for both clinics," Rhodey says, pulling out a scrap of paper from his pocket. "Assuming they're up-to-date, and I don't know how much it helps. The clinic on 157th has a Dr. Glen Gabaldon, a Dr. Francis Gross, and a Nurse Julia Pacek. The one on 94th Street has Nurses Paul Gabino, Pat Brown, Gabriela Hernandez, and Gloria Schneider."

"Great, let's search the hard drive for all of those names, see if anything comes up," Bobbi says. She gets up from the table and goes to Daisy's room, sitting down in front of the computer. Rhodey and Clint follow her in and watch as she sets up parallel searches with the names from the list.

While the search is running, they move on to the next topic. "Weren't you looking into the virus?" Rhodey asks Bobbi. "Did you figure out yet what it's supposed to do?"

"Right. I haven't had a chance to talk to anyone about it, but from what I've read, there's a lot of talk about how it's supposed to affect the brain, suppress activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which, well, it's not spelled out in any of the papers, but I'm guessing the long-term goal is brainwashing."

"Of course." Rhodey shakes his head. "Why is it always brainwashing with everyone these days? Whatever happened to straightforward attacks?"

"A.I.M. wants to control the world, not destroy it," Clint points out.

"And technically, brainwashing is the best-case scenario," Bobbi says. "Worst case is that everyone who comes into contact with it dies. And spreads it to others."

Clint frowns. "Why bother trying to take over the world if you're going to kill everyone? Is the idea that if it works fast enough, it might not spread out of Manhattan?"

"Given the number of commuters in the city, that seems unlikely," Bobbi says. "But I think you're right—their goal isn't to kill everyone who comes into contact with it, that was just a side effect during the initial testing. So either they think they've fixed whatever was causing the mice to die, or they consider it an acceptable loss."

"They don't call them evil scientists for nothing," Rhodey says. He walks over to the largest desk and leans against it.

"You're right about that." A beep on the computer alerts her to the fact that the search has finished, and she glances over to see that there are zero results. "Damn. Nothing."

"Let's at least get profiles of all of the people on that list, so that we have some idea of who to be wary of," Clint says. He frowns and turns to Bobbi. "Is there an antidote?"

Bobbi shakes her head. "I haven't seen anything mentioning one, and it's not safe to assume. We really, really need to prevent this from getting out."

 

 

She's awake.

Natasha's eyes snap open, and she looks back and forth between the people standing on her sides. It takes her a few seconds to connect the faces to the people, and then everything clicks. Daisy on her right, Bucky on her left.

"Widow. You with us?" Daisy asks.

"Do you remember?" Bucky adds, before she has a chance to answer Daisy.

"Let her breathe, Barnes."

Letting her breathe is what he's been doing for the past half a year, Natasha thinks, and she tries to go further back, pull out anything from before then. The Avengers. She was on an Avengers team. Multiple Avengers teams, actually. Was he on any of them with her? She doesn't remember him being there.

"How do you feel?" Bucky asks.

"Fine, I think," she says. Except for not being able to move; she doesn't like that very much.

"Do you have any new memories that you didn't have before?" Daisy asks.

"I don't know. How can I tell?"

"When did we first meet?" Bucky asks.

She looks at him, and tries to remember. He was... Bucky Barnes, Captain America's sidekick, who had died in World War II. And then it turned out that he had been alive all along, and… the metal arm was related to that somehow, and he was an assassin—the Winter Soldier. How did they meet?

"I don't know," she admits.

"Damn it," Daisy says, and she reaches over Natasha's chest to start unstrapping her.

"It's okay. We'll figure out another way," Bucky says. He's putting on a brave front for her, but she remembers his words last night about how scared he was to get his hopes up and then have them crash again. Maybe she shouldn't involve him in this—it's not fair to him. At least she doesn't know what she's missing. But he said he wanted to help, and she's too selfish to push him away.

 

 

The away team gets home late in the afternoon, having been unsuccessful in restoring Natasha's memories. "It's okay, though," Natasha says. "We all knew that this was a long shot. It just happened to be the easiest thing to try."

"So what's Plan B?" Rhodey asks.

Bucky speaks. "We should go after Rodchenko. The one who did this to you in the first place."

Rodchenko is the ex-Soviet engineer who'd been in charge of altering memories and molding young minds in the Red Room, and a few months back, when Leo Novokov had decided it was time to take his revenge on Bucky for moving on with his life, Novokov had found Rodchenko and threatened his family in order to force the man to brainwash Natasha.

Clint tilts his head at Bucky, his expression skeptical. "You pulverized that guy's brain; how's he going to help us?"

Everyone looks at Bucky, and he holds up a hand. "In my defense..."

After a beat, Rhodey says, "Yes?"

Bucky shrugs. "That's all I got."

Daisy rolls her eyes. "Wonderful."

"We're looking forward here, people," Bobbi says. "Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. was able to help him like they did—for the most part—for Nat. How do we find him?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. must keep tabs on him," Natasha says.

Bobbi leans back against the wall and sighs. "Either of us log into the S.H.I.E.L.D. network, fifteen alarms pop up on Maria Hill's desktop."

"I can do it," Bucky offers.

"If they see that you accessed that information, they'll know why," Rhodey points out.

"Only if they're monitoring him," Daisy says. "And they have no reason to do so."

"Great, so you'll go," Natasha says to Bucky.

Bucky nods. "Where exactly am I going?"

"The Hoboken office is closest," Bobbi says.

"Back to Jersey." He runs his hands together. "Is it just me, or does every organization have a Jersey office?" 

"Real estate's cheaper than in the city," Daisy says with a shrug.

Bobbi winks. " _Everything_ is cheaper in New Jersey."

"All right. So this is what you're going to do," Daisy continues, impressing Bobbi by quoting the next line of her reference perfectly, without batting an eyelash. "Get in there, try not to be seen, but if you do, it's not the end of the world. You still have ties to S.H.I.E.L.D.; it's not crazy that you would be there. Now, S.H.I.E.L.D. obviously confiscated the machine that Rodchenko used for the brainwashing, so you'll need to get a location for that in addition to Rodchenko."

"Got it." He takes some equipment, including a comm link and a few weapons, just in case, and Daisy hands him her car keys, and then he goes. Once he's gone, Clint flips on the television, but he seems restless, and after a few minutes, he gets up and nudges Natasha's arm.

"Let's go for a walk," he says. "Get you out of this place, distract you a little."

She doesn't think she needs the distraction, but she does know that part of being a good friend is letting people do things for you, even if it's really for themselves, and she doesn't mind the fresh air.

It's sunny outside, but a little windy and chilly. They walk quickly, though, and it doesn't take them long to warm up. After a few blocks, Clint turns to her and says, "I don't know what's going on with me and Bobbi."

Oh, she's been had. This is less of a distraction for her than a chance to corner her and ask for advice on his love life. She's not sure where he got the idea that she's a good source of advice in this sort of thing.

He continues. "I thought we were over, but since I got my memories back, I…well. And now she's saying things that are confusing, and I just don't know. Please don't tell her I spoke to you about this."

She doesn't know how to approach this—is she supposed to be a sounding board, or is she supposed to encourage him one way or the other? She already knows what Bobbi wants, and being privy to both sides gives her an amount of power that, frankly, she's not sure she's comfortable with.

He's waiting for an answer now, so she says, "Okay, I won't."

He rolls his eyes. "What do you think, I mean?"

"I don't know. What do you mean when you say you thought you were over?"

"I mean, we tried so many times, and don't you think that if you keep breaking up, eventually you just have to call it quits? If we were meant to be together, it would have been easier, don't you think?"

Doesn't she think. What does she know? "Listen, you might be asking the wrong person. I don't know if love is supposed to be easy. My most significant relationships were all disasters, possibly excepting the one that I don't remember. But if you ask me whether you and Bobbi were ever really over, I would have to say no. I was there, remember? Right after you broke up, that mission in the Kuril islands, we got separated from her and Fortune, and the entire time, all you could think about was getting back to her, and when you finally saw each other again, the way the two of you looked at each other.... And then I turn around and suddenly you're dating Spider-Woman. Why did you do that?"

"I don't know." He's silent for a minute. "This is going to make me sound like a bad person, but I kept seeing Bobbi every time I closed my eyes and I _liked_ Jess and I thought—"

"Rebound, that's what I thought it was. Still fucking stupid. You were shitty to her. Jess, I mean."

"I know."

"You were still in love with Bobbi when you started dating her."

"I'll always be in love with Bobbi. So, what, I can never date again?"

She shakes her head. "Why would you date someone when you're in love with someone else? I don't get that at all. When I want someone, I go for them—no games."

He glances over, and something in her expression must set him off, because he suddenly bursts out laughing.

"What?" she demands.

He's doubled over, laughing so hard he can't even speak, and he has to stop walking until he can recover. A woman walking a dog walks by, gives him a strange look. Finally, he calms down, and wipes tears from his eyes. "No games? Nat. Come on. Who do you think you're talking to? Did you forget that we used to date and you played games the whole entire time?" 

"That was a long time ago," Natasha says, scowling.

"And Daredevil?" 

She stiffens. "You don't know anything about my relationship with Daredevil."

"I know that you pined for him for years after you broke up with him." 

"How could you possibly know that?" 

"Everyone knows it. I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're not as above it all as you think you are."

Natasha sighs. "I did pine for him for years," she admits. "I only really got over it recently. Sometime after the superhero civil war, I guess, but I don't remember what the turning point was, when I finally realized I was over him."

Clint gives her a look, and she realizes. It all goes back to the same place, apparently. Everything that she doesn't remember is important. "Of course," she says. "I should have known."

"It's funny." He rubs his chin. "It was the same for me. Meeting Bobbi was what helped me finally get over you."

It suddenly clicks into place. "So you thought you would do it again with Jess."

"Um," he says. "I don't think that's how it happened, exactly."

She ignores that. "Why someone else, though? Why not just go back to Bobbi and admit it was a mistake?"

"It wasn't a mistake," Clint says. "I've hurt her too many times for her to trust me. And for that matter, when we were together last, it wasn't so great for my mental health, either."

"Yah, yah," she plays up her accent, for effect, "' _All this intrigue and spy shit is more than I can deal with_ ' and then two months later you up and join S.H.I.E.L.D. Real convincing."

"I still don't kill."

"Has she ever asked you to?" 

He doesn't answer right away, and then he says, "I have, though. Killed for her."

"Well, you're not going to shock me with confessions of killing," she says. "By the way, don't ever tell Jess that the reason you dated her was because you were trying to get over Bobbi."

"Come on, I'm not that much of an ass."

She raises her eyebrows.

"Well, I'm trying not to be that much of an ass in the future."

They walk a few more blocks and decide to turn around, and then Natasha—she has no idea what she's doing, she's not a relationship counselor or even a friend people usually go to for advice in their love life, by any stretch, but she decides to try.

"Okay, forget about Bobbi for a second. Let's talk about relationships in general. Long-term monogamy is what you want, right? Otherwise, we can have an entirely different conversation." She's confident that she knows him well enough to know the answer to this, but it doesn't hurt to check.

"No, it is." He sounds sure, which is what she thought.

"So, you're single now. Pretend you have a blank slate. If you could choose anyone in the world to spend the rest of your life with, who would it be?" 

He looks at her like it's a stupid question. "Of course it's her, you know that. It's always been her. But what good does pretending do? I can't erase the past."

 _Well, you_ can, she thinks, and she can't help being a little resentful.

Later, after Bucky comes back with the addresses, after they've gone out to eat at Rhodey's favorite burger place, after everyone has gone to bed and all the lights are off, she gets the other side of the story from Bobbi.

She's going to have to take matters into her own hands, she decides, which she knows both of them are going to hate her for, but her ideas always work out for the best, and it's worth a little bit of hate. She may not be able to patch together her own life, she may never get her memories back and maybe she'll always have an empty hole where they once were, but this? In this, she _will_ be successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the thing about Bobbi and Clint's relationship, and I think this is pretty close to canon: If you asked them separately whether if Clint had initially supported her about the Phantom Rider's death, they still would eventually have broken up, I think they would have different answers. Bobbi would say yes, because either way, she would have been spiraling after the Skrulls kidnapped her, and she would pushed him away anyway, and the darkness would have been too much for him. And Clint would say no, because if he hadn't lost her trust in the first place, she would have been more open about what she was going through when she came back, and they would have been able to work through it together. So I'm trying to show that they're coming from two very different perspectives here, even though they both still love each other. I hope I was able to get this idea through while keeping true to the characters.
> 
> (Oh, and...yes, this chapter had a Hamilton reference. And yes, Hamilton didn't premiere on Broadway until August 2015, while this fic is set in 2014, but… I dunno, artistic license?)


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team takes a visit to Professor Rodchenko about restoring Natasha's memories, while Bucky works on his compuper skills, and if you got that reference, then this is the chapter for you!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exciting news: I now have a beta! Thank you so much to [mswhich](archiveofourown.org/users/mswhich) for all the corrections and suggestions which helped make this chapter what it is.
> 
> Also, in case you missed it, the rating of this fic has been moved up to mature due to a certain scene in this chapter.

Daisy and Natasha cook up a strategy early in the morning, and they decide to split into two teams, one going to find Rodchenko and the other to stake out the storage unit where his machine is being kept. That way, if S.H.I.E.L.D. is monitoring him and they see that he's being approached by Natasha, she'll have a team already on-site to keep the machine safe for her. They relay the plan to the rest of the group when everyone is awake and Rhodey arrives, and then there's the matter of who should go where.

“You definitely shouldn't go to Rodchenko,” Daisy says to Bucky. “He'll freeze up if he sees you.”

"He might be more likely to talk, if he's scared," Bobbi points out.

"Natasha should be enough for that," Daisy says. "He isn't a villain, and I'm sure he feels guilty enough about what he did to her."

“I'll go in the second group,” Bucky agrees, without a fuss. Natasha imagines that he doesn't particularly want to face Rodchenko, either, whether it's out of guilt or residual anger or a combination of both.

In the end, they split up the teams like this: Daisy and Rhodey will go with her, and Bobbi and Clint will go with Bucky. Natasha gives her car keys to Clint and sends them off, while she and Rhodey go in Daisy's car. Between the two groups, Natasha is the only one costumed up, although Bobbi, Clint, and Bucky all have equipment stashed in their trunk, and Rhodey has his armor in a briefcase, in case they run into trouble.

 

 

They park across the street, and Natasha watches the window through a pair of binoculars for a few minutes until she sees definite movement coming from inside. All of her memories of Rodchenko are fuzzy, but the figure inside is a white man in his sixties with some facial hair, which matches the profile.

“Let's get him,” she says, opening the door. They cross the road together and approach the building.

“Rhodes, I need you to stay outside, in case he tries to bolt,” Daisy says, handing him an earpiece.

“Copy that,” Rhodey responds. He takes the earpiece from her and puts it on, adjusting it a few times, before walking over to the building and taking position by the wall near the fire escape.

Daisy puts in her own earpiece. “Can everyone hear me?” she asks. To Natasha, she adds, “Sorry that we don’t have enough of these to go around, try to stick with me if at all possible.”

“I hear you,” Rhodey says. There's a beat of silence during which Natasha assumes the storage unit team is checking in as well. 

“Great,” Daisy says. “Widow, we're ready.”

“Good luck, ‘Tasha,” Rhodey says, as she turns to go.

“Thanks.” She's surprised to find that her palms are sweaty. She reminds herself of the low odds of success, which helps to center her, so that she can focus on the concrete steps that need to be taken without worrying about the results.

She and Daisy walk into the building. It's old, a little dingy, but presentable, the kind of place where your neighbors could be anyone from four broke millennials (only three of whom are on the lease) to a family with five children to an old man in a witness protection program. There’s an elevator, but elevators can be tricky—there’s always a risk of getting stuck, and they don’t want to lose him if he sees them watching him and decides to make his escape. His apartment is on the third floor, so the stairs are hardly an inconvenience.

Natasha stays hidden in the stairwell as Daisy knocks on the door. They hear some shuffling inside, and then his voice, from the other side of the door. “Who is it?”

“I’m from upstairs,” Daisy answers. “I’m having some trouble with my sink, and I lost the super’s number, do you have it?”

The door opens a crack, and Natasha recognizes him now, from the Red Room. His head is as bald as it was in the seventies, and he still has the same untrimmed goatee, though it’s more gray than brown at this point. Quick as a flash, Daisy sticks her foot in the doorway. Rodchenko’s expression turns from wary to terrified as Daisy and Natasha push their way into the apartment.

His eyes go round behind his wire-rimmed glasses as he recognizes Natasha. "You!"

"I'm not going to hurt you," Natasha says.

"We're here to ask for your help," Daisy adds when he doesn’t respond. He’s frozen in place, his face white with fear.

Natasha speaks firmly but tries to sound non-threatening. "I need you to reverse everything you did to me."

Rodchenko starts to shake, and he glances at the window for a second.

“Rhodes, get ready,” Daisy says into her earpiece, but he’s not running. More to herself than to anyone else, she mutters, "What's wrong with him?"

“I’m so sorry,” Rodchenko says. “I’m so sorry.”

Daisy speaks into the earpiece again. “He’s staying put. Come and join us. Over.”

“Let’s go inside,” Natasha says, and they steer him over to an armchair, where he sits down. Natasha sits on the couch next to him, and Daisy stands behind the chair, while he repeats, “I’m so sorry,” over and over. Rhodey comes inside and closes the door behind himself, and Rodchenko doesn’t even look up at the noise.

“Professor, can you help me?” Natasha asks him, and he looks up at her in surprise, as if he didn’t realize she was still there.

"I'm not a brave man,” he says sadly. “And now, I'm not a smart one, either."

Natasha forces herself not to flop back in exasperation. Gently, she asks, "You mean you don't remember how to brainwash anymore?"

“What if he's lying?” Rhodey says, without waiting for confirmation.

Rodchenko starts to cry. “I'm not lying. I have nothing against you, I swear. If I could help you, I would.”

“He has no reason to lie,” says Daisy. “It was Novokov threatening him, and Novokov is in custody. ”

Rhodey lowers his eyebrows, looking at her like he thinks she’s being naive. “‘In custody’ doesn’t mean the threat is gone.” 

He’s right, something they all know from experience. “Professor,” Natasha says. “If you're being threatened, we can protect you. Please trust us. Is there any possibility that you would be able to use your machine to reverse the programming you gave me?”

He’s more calm now, as if he finally believes that they’re not here to hurt him. “My dear. I wish I could help you, I do. But the only way for you to heal is time. Eventually, the brain finds its old connections again, and you may begin to remember.”

“Eventually when?”

He sighs, looking distressed. "It was a very strong reinforcement, that one. Five years, ten?"

“Ten years?” she repeats. She doesn't want to spend the next ten years in limbo.

“I can't think of another solution. Perhaps my own brain will heal sooner, and I'll gain back my knowledge of how to undo the programming. If I'm still alive by then.”

 

 

Bucky slams a fist into his thigh when Bobbi relays the news. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

“I'm sorry, Buck,” Bobbi says, putting her hand on his shoulder. “But we'll—”

“‘Think of something else,’” he finishes in a flat tone. “I know.”

They're silent for a bit, and then Clint points at Bucky. "Hey, maybe you can do it.”

"Why would I be able to—" Bucky stops, and his eyes widen. “Oh, I don't know.”

"I'm lost here," Bobbi says, looking between the two of them. "How would Bucky know how to program this thing?"

“When Novokov kidnapped Natasha, he left a… ransom note, for lack of a better term, along with a disk with something for me to program into my own head.”

“And like a dummy, he did it.” Clint smacks the back of Bucky's head lightly.

“A desperate dummy,” Bucky admits. “Anyway, the first step of the sequence was for me to create a new program to use on Rodchenko, erasing his knowledge of how to work the machine.”

“Oh, so when he said you pulverized Rodchenko’s brain…”

“Right.”

“I thought you just hit him really hard.”

Bucky lets that remark go, and continues, “But the programming in my head didn’t give me much insight into the inner workings of the machine. I knew which keys to hit in which order, but I didn't understand the engineering behind it. I'm not much of a computer person.”

“What if you sat down in front of the machine and just… tried to channel it?” Clint says. “See what comes out?”

Bucky takes a deep breath and nods slowly. “I could...yeah. I could try that.”

Bucky sits down in front of the keyboard, then closes his eyes. Bobbi and Clint wait, trying not to make any potentially-distracting sounds, and Bucky puts his hands on the keyboard and concentrates. He starts to hum tunelessly, making a kind of buzzing sound, and Bobbi is reminded of the yoga techniques he taught her in Hawaii.

After a few minutes of humming, he stops, and his hands start to move. He starts typing slowly, getting the feel for it, and then his hands gradually move faster like it’s all coming back to him. They watch in awe as his hands fly over the keys without pause for what must be at least ten minutes.

Finally, he stops and turns around. “I think I’ve recreated the sequence that I used on Rodchenko. I’m going to try and make changes to it now.”

Bobbi steps forward, unable to handle her curiosity, and looks at what he’s done. The screen on the left is filled with some low-level code that’s completely unintelligible, and the screen on the right has a diagram that shows the logic behind erasing and implanting memories. She watches as Bucky starts to rearrange the code, which results in some of the figures in the diagram moving around, as well.

“Wow, it looks like you retained more than you thought,” she says, impressed.

He responds with a, “Shhh,” which doesn’t offend her—she’s done a bit of coding herself in the past and knows how essential concentration is, so she goes back to the other side of the room. Clint catches her eye and signs the word **Spit** , which confuses her until he pulls out a deck of cards from his pocket. She nods with her hand, signing **Yes** in return, and they find a flat surface and amuse themselves playing in silence until Bucky speaks again.

“I think I have something,” he says, finally.

“You got it?” Clint jumps up from his seat, card game forgotten.

“It’s a draft. I need to test it. I think there’s a simulation program in here, so I can see if it does what I think it does.”

The feeling of relief is palpable. She’s on a high, even though she was just a bystander. Her heart is racing, and she feels like jumping and squealing in happiness, confident in her knowledge that if they put their minds to it, they can accomplish anything.

And then Clint exclaims, “They’re probably on their way home!” Which snaps her out of it. In all the excitement, she’d completely forgotten. “Bobbi, you’ve got to tell Daisy to come here.”

“Right.” She presses the button on her earpiece. “Daisy? Come in. We might be able to use the machine anyway. Bucky still has the knowledge from when he was under the influence, and he’s working on a sequence to undo the programming. Over.”

Daisy’s voice in her ear. “You’re shitting me.”

“I’m really not.” She can’t keep the grin out of her voice.

“We’re on our way. Over and out.”

Bucky keeps working at it, making small changes here and there, for the next hour, and Bobbi and Clint keep playing with the cards, switching to Rummy when they get bored, and finally, in desperation, War.

They hear the engine of a car from outside, getting closer and then turning off.

“Is that you guys?” Bobbi says into the earpiece.

“It’s us,” Rhodey confirms.

“They’re here,” she says to the others, and she stands up and goes to the door to let them in. They come inside, a little subdued, like they’re waiting for her to say that Bucky wasn’t able to figure it out, but he’s sitting in front of the controls, practically beaming.

“I’ve got it,” he says. “I ran the simulation successfully with a bunch of different scenarios, and it’s good.”

“Good work, Barnes,” Daisy says, and then, with a wink, “Natasha, you trust this guy?” 

“Ask me again when I wake up,” Natasha retorts, as she climbs into the chair.

 

 

“Done.” Bucky says, and everyone stops their conversations to gather in. He swivels around in his chair, presses two fingers to Natasha's forearm, and pulls out the needle. It takes about ten seconds for her to open her eyes with a start. 

“You're back,” Daisy says. “Did you bring any more memories with you?”

Bobbi watches in suspense as Natasha sets her jaw, closes her eyes for a few seconds, then opens them and groans. “Nothing.”

Daisy lets out a string of expletives, echoing the thoughts of everyone else in the room.

“Maybe I did something wrong,” Bucky says, seemingly to himself.

Natasha turns to Daisy. “Maybe the memories are just gone. Maybe the part of my brain with those memories was literally destroyed.”

“No, there was no physical damage on the brain scans.” 

Bucky’s still talking to himself. “There's nothing wrong with the programming, as far as I can tell. I don't know why it didn't work.”

“It's okay. We'll think of something else.”

Natasha starts speaking the sequence that will reactivate her no-touching brain tech, and that’s when the idea pops into Bobbi’s head. It’s a good one, probably the best shot they have. The only problem is the tricky issue of diplomacy. She's going to need a third party to help her out with this one, but fortunately, she knows exactly who that third party should be.

 

 

When they get back, Natasha is exhausted. All she wants to do is take a nap and have everyone leave her alone. And after Bobbi takes a burner phone and leaves the apartment (apparently she was hit by a fantastic idea regarding restoring Natasha's memory, but she doesn't want to say anything before checking that it'll be possible), everyone does leave her alone. She lies down on the bed for a few minutes, but then she realizes she's not that kind of tired. She needs a break from people, from conversation, but she’s spent enough time being unconscious today, and in any case, there’s some stuff she needs to take care of.

Bobbi brings Chinese takeout with her when she reappears, and she's in an excellent mood, like she's sure _this time_ it'll be different, but Natasha doesn't even have the energy to ask what the new plan is. She's starting to sympathize with the speech Bucky gave her a few days ago about crashed hopes.

Daisy turns on the TV after dinner, and starts flipping channels. When she lands on a Friends rerun, she puts the remote down, and everyone joins her on the couches.

On the screen, Phoebe is complaining about a neighbor repaying her kindness in raking his leaves by giving her cider and cookies, while she's trying to prove that good deeds can be selfless, and then Chandler walks into the room and asks Monica if her new boyfriend is better in bed than Richard, her ex.

“What’s going on?” Bucky asks. “Why does he care if her boyfriend is good in bed?”

“You’ve never seen Friends before?” Bobbi says, then immediately follows it up with, “Stupid question, sorry. Chandler _is_ her new boyfriend, but their friends don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“No, they know,” Rhodey says, “but he doesn’t know that they know.”

Clint says, “No, he knows that they know, but they don’t know—”

“That’s a different episode,” Bobbi interrupts. “Nobody knows anything yet. Shhh.”

“All right, have fun,” Bucky says. “I’ll be in my room.” He takes a handful of magazines from the rack next to the big couch—an amenity seen to by Colonel Fury himself—and walks off with them. Everyone else stays and settles in: Bobbi and Natasha sharing the big couch with the quilt covering their feet, Rhodey stretched out on the other couch, and Clint and Daisy each with an armchair to themselves.

The Friends episodes line up back-to-back-to-back, so they keep watching until late. Clint is the first one to get up, claiming to be “tuckered” (no prepositional adverb completing the phrase). Everyone wishes him a good night, and Natasha smiles on the inside.

It doesn't take long before his voice rings out from down the hall. "Hey, 'Tasha! Why's all your stuff in my room?"

"It's not your room anymore," she calls back.

"What? You're moving in? Bobbi doesn't snore _that_ loud."

"Screw you, buddy!" Bobbi says from her comfortable position on the couch, engrossed in the show and only half paying attention.

"Well, it's a good thing you don't mind it," Natasha says dryly.

"What do you—" There's a sound of another door opening, and a few seconds later— " _Hey_!"

Bobbi shoots her a questioning look.

Clint walks back into the living room. "Remember how I said we were going to have that same fight again, about you thinking that you know better than everyone else in the world and never consulting with anybody about anything?"

"I don't think—" Natasha starts to say, but he's not done.

" _I didn't know it would be this soon!_ "

Bobbi frowns. "What did you do?" she asks.

Clint presses his fingers to his brow and takes a deep breath before saying, "She moved her stuff into my room and moved me into yours.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha can see Rhodey and Daisy exchange an _Oh, what now_ look. At the same time, Bobbi sits up straight, her expression alarmed. "She _what_? You what?"

"Welcome to my world.” Clint shakes his head in exasperation.

"Nat, I didn't—" Bobbi looks mortified, and she turns to Clint. "I didn't ask her to do this, I swear."

“I didn't think you did. _She_ just does whatever she wants.”

"Ugh." Natasha rolls her eyes. "There are two beds in that room. You want to be platonic? Be platonic, I don't care. But just… make up your minds."

They stare at her like she's crazy, but she's not interested in arguing. She's high-handed, she's arrogant, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's also right.

On that note, Natasha simply stands up and walks away, heading straight to Bucky's room. She doesn't bother knocking, and she accidentally uses more force than she intends to, causing the door to slam open against the wall. He's on his stomach with a magazine open in front of him, reading a recipe for frittatas, and he looks up at the noise.

“Hey,” he says, his expression impassive.

She doesn't bother with the pleasantries. “I like you. A lot.”

She can see it register in his face, but he doesn’t move.

“And I want you.”

She reaches for him, but he gets there first, jumping off the bed and fitting her waist in his hands as he kisses her hard. She returns the kiss just as eagerly. Their chemistry is off the charts, her whole body coming to life, and he slides one hand up her back to caress her cheek without breaking off the kiss.

When it's over, he backs up until he hits the wall, looking at her almost in fear. She wonders for a second if she should feel guilty, but right now, she doesn't give a damn about how she _should_ be feeling.

“Even if we never get my memories back, both of those things will still be true,” she says, continuing the thought from earlier. “And you're just going to have to deal with that.”

With that, she spins on her heels and walks out of the room.

 

 

He's not making a sound, but she can feel his presence in the room like a radiator, giving off some kind of heat that she can't ignore. She's never been able to escape him, and here he is, in her bedroom. Getting ready for a sleepover.

She picks up her pajamas, a gray tank top and lounge pants set, and fusses with them, folding and refolding them because she doesn't know what else to do. She should tell him not to worry about it, that he'll take the second bed and they'll just pretend it's no big—

No. As much as an overstep as it was, Natasha's given her an opportunity to settle this once and for all, and she's not going to waste it. Tonight, everything is going to come to a head, for better or for worse. She opens her mouth, but he speaks first. 

“She embarrassed you.”

That's his concern; that she might have been embarrassed by Natasha's actions, now that it's clear to everyone how she feels. They all know that she never stopped loving him, that she wants him back... and meanwhile, he's worried about _her_ feelings. It's not fair, how hard he makes it to stop loving him.

“Don't be too hard on her,” Bobbi says. “She just wants us to be happy.”

He doesn't say anything right away, and when she looks at him, he looks thoughtful. "Did I ever make you happy, Bobbi?" 

She snorts in disbelief. "What a question! Don't you remember what it was like, in the beginning?"

"Yeah. I mean. I just wanted to see if you remembered it the same as me. That I wasn't just fooling myself."

She drops the clothing onto the bed and walks over to face him, gathering her courage before continuing.

“You talked yesterday about all of the things you did wrong during our marriage, all of the ways you failed me. And I could just as easily make a list of all of the ways you made my life better, but it doesn't matter. We were more than just a list of pros and cons. We were....” Her voice trails off as she gets lost in her memories of the good times, and she has to shake it off before continuing. “If you want to know the truth, it scared me, how hard I fell, and how quickly. I mean, I proposed to you after we'd only known each other for a few days, and if you remember, during those few days, you brushed me off more than once. I was afraid of losing myself in you, and I was afraid you were going to wake up from whatever trance you were in and leave. And when the Phantom Rider—I lied to you, because I was afraid that you wouldn't want to touch me anymore if you knew what he'd done, and I misjudged you, which I'm so sorry about—”

His eyes flash. "How can you _say_ that, after what I did?"

“Well, you hadn't done anything yet when I lied to you, had you? And then you reacted badly, and it was like I had finally found what I'd been looking for, proof that you didn't love me after all, and I ran.”

He clasps her hands in his and brings them to his chest. “I was such an ass. I was so young and inexperienced—what did I know about right and wrong? But I didn’t want to lose you. I was just such an idiot.”

"You were," she admits. "But you've apologized, and you've changed, and Clint, I need you to forgive yourself for that. Otherwise, we’ll never have a chance. And I want to be with you. I want us to be happy. So, please, if you want this even a fraction as much as I do… just let it go."

He tightens his grip on her hands and his voice trembles as he says, "Do you think we do? Have a chance?"

God, she hopes so. She looks him straight in the eyes, drops her mask, and asks, "What do you _want_?"

"I want you," he responds, and she exhales in relief. "Us. I want the best parts of everything that we ever were, all at once. When we first met, we were a great team. When we were married, we had all that passion and fun, and even when we were divorced, you were my rock, the one person who would always have my back, no matter what. I want _all_ of those things with you, for the rest of my life."

"Oh," she breathes. "That’s what I want, too."

Their mouths meet at the same time, bodies pressed close together and arms wrapping around each other like vines twined around a tree, like a protective cage enveloping the two of them. His fingers run through her hair, his hand settles at the back of her neck and pulls her even closer. It's not enough—she fastens her teeth to his lower lip and tugs, and he parts his lips like she wants and gives her his tongue, which she needs. It's not pretty, it's not slow, and it's not enough, will never be enough.

They stop for a second to catch their breath, but stay entangled, foreheads resting against each other, bodies pressed together.

"It's been hell," he says, breathing heavily, "being so close to you, having to hold myself back. But I was convinced that you would never want anything long-term again. And then I thought, maybe just one night, but I know I would never recover from just one night with you."

"Not in a million years," Bobbi says fiercely, "would I ever be able to have 'just one night' with you."

He moves his lips to hers again, and this time it's slower, deeper. His lips are soft and full, and his taste is just like she remembers, like she's coming home again after a long trip. She didn't expect this, didn't dare to hope, and it feels like a dream, but she knows that she doesn't need to fear waking up and having it torn away. It's forever this time.

"About Natasha," she says, and he groans. "No, hear me out. When we were together, you never gave me a reason to be jealous. Of her, or of anyone else. But I know you, and I know that you don't stop loving people, especially over something as minor as a breakup. You'll always have a soft spot for her, along with every other woman from your past."

"It's not—" he starts.

“I don't mean it in a bad way; it's one of the things I love about you. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know. You're a good person, Clint Barton.”

He stares like he can't believe this is real. "God, I'm so lucky to have met you. I love you so much, you have no idea. You're _it_ for me, Birdie, I swear."

"It goes both ways, lover."

His smile lights up his entire face, and she's reminded of the young man she married all those years ago, before anything went wrong, the man with the open heart who brought his new bride home to the Avengers and started a new team with her and had no idea that anything would ever challenge their bliss. He's not that man anymore, knows all about challenges now, but this is a new kind of love, the sweetness balanced out with wisdom and experience, richer than the love of youth.

"Hey," he says, "I know that this is the last thing that anyone would ever expect me to say, but... can we not have sex tonight? I have some...ideas, and I want it to be special."

Bobbi lets out an involuntary sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. "You've won me over with 'I want it to be special,' but it's been a long time for me, sport."

"Well, I meant I want to wait for myself, but if you—I'd love to take care of you. If you want me to?"

He asks like he's not sure of the answer, and she loves him all the more for it. "Yeah. Yeah, I want you to."

They move over to her bed, and he stands behind her, puts his hands on her hips, and slides them over the front of her jeans so that she can feel his warmth all around her, then unbuttons, unzips. He stops moving his hands, keeps them still as he rolls forward onto the balls of his feet, rocking his hips into her, nudging his erection against her denim-clad bottom. She bites her lip and lets out a tiny grunt, which he echoes. It must prompt him to hurry up, because he pushes her jeans down her legs, then lifts one thigh at a time so she can wiggle the rest of the way out of them. 

The rest of her clothing stays on, and they crawl onto the bed, and he slips his hand into her panties and shows her that he remembers exactly how she likes it. She tries not to be loud, and when she knows she's about to come, she pulls his head towards hers and kisses him and he swallows her moans. He finally pulls away and casually uses his mouth to clean his fingers, and the matter-of-fact way he does it makes her burn so hard it should be illegal. She's so happy she wants to cry.

Afterwards, they hold each other, gazing into each other's eyes like newlyweds, and she says, "Did I tell you yet that I love you?"

"I don't know, but I already know."

"Well, I love you."

"I love you."

"God, we're gross."

"So gross."

She's laughs because she doesn't know what else to do with all the giddiness inside of her, and then she thinks of something which makes her feel…not less happy, but more serious.

“Hey,” she says, bringing a hand up to stroke her fingers along his temple, “remember that thing you said the other day about starting therapy?”

“Sure.”

“You should. And so should I. Independently and together. I want this to stick this time, and that means we really need to put in an effort. No more worrying about one thing and saying something else. We need to learn the tools, instead of just saying that love will carry us through.”

"It's a deal."

They almost drift off that way, holding each other, but then Clint says, “Remember what I said about not having sex tonight?” 

“Mmm-hmm.”

He whispers something in her ear which makes her eyes go wide and her mouth go dry, and she nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Then he kisses her again, quick and soft and sweet, and she says, “If this is going to spoil your resolve, you can move to the other bed. I won't be offended.”

He smiles. "I will. Eventually."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing that Clint whispers to Bobbi won’t be addressed in this fic; my plan is to write an explicit one-shot which will be part of this series and will focus on that, so keep an eye out. (Although it probably won’t come out until this fic is done.)


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team takes a well-deserved day off, and a certain librarian makes a cameo appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the clicks and kudos and comments! I love that people are reading and enjoying this; it means so much, really. <333
> 
> Extra-special thank you to [mswhich](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mswhich) for your beta work. (Any errors mean that I was playing around with the wording after she went over it, and are entirely my fault.)

Bobbi wakes up stupidly happy, and at first she thinks she must have had a fabulous dream, but then she remembers that it’s real, and she starts to laugh. Clint is in the other bed—she doesn’t remember him moving, it must have been after she fell asleep—and he pokes his head out of the mess of blankets at the sound.

“‘It was the lark; the herald of the morn,’” he ad-libs, his voice raspy with sleep.

“Quoting Shakespeare at me,” she says, smiling.

“If you say, ‘Who are you and what have you done with the real Clint Barton…’”

“No, I know that you secretly read sometimes. It’s just sweet that you’re quoting Shakespeare at me.”

He shoves the blankets off of himself, then walks over and looks down at her for a long moment. Then he smiles and drops a kiss on her forehead.

“Want the first shower?” he asks. 

“You take it, you're up anyway.”

She closes her eyes again as he heads towards the bathroom, but when she hears the water start, she starts to picture the scene behind the door, Clint all naked and wet in the shower, and she finds herself very awake. It's instinct more than intent that pulls her from the bed and brings her to the bathroom.

She opens the door and steps into the the steam-filled room. The warm air makes her feel languid, like this is a dream sequence, as she turns her eyes to the shower. The door is frosted glass, but she can still make out his outline, the lines of his body that are etched into her mind from experience. Bobbi leans against the tile wall to enjoy the view, letting her imagination fill in the blanks.

The water turns off, and he pokes his head out, his hair in messy, wet tendrils over his forehead. “Can I help you?”

“No, I’m good,” she responds with a grin and a wink.

“Oh, I see how it is.” His smile is slow, sensual, dangerous. He ducks back behind the door, and now that he knows has an audience, his movements are smoother, turning the shower into a show. He lathers up slowly, spending extra time soaping up his arms and chest, turning to the side and leaning all the way down to get at his legs.

Then he stands, and the water turns back on, rinsing the suds off, but he doesn’t turn the shower off once he’s done. He stands under the stream, his profile in fuzzy but perfect view, and then he puts one hand up over the top of the door, curling his fingers around the gold trim, and his other hand…

He crooks his elbow and brings his hand to the center of his body, and there’s absolutely no mistaking what he’s doing. She swallows, unable to look away as he works his hand back and forth. He’s beautiful, so comfortable in his body, and the sounds he’s making, the groans and the hisses, just barely audible over the splashing of the water, go straight to her groin.

Bobbi's fingers come up of their own volition to touch her throat, skimming over her collarbone. She bites her bottom lip, torn between watching it all play out and walking into the shower fully-dressed and dropping to her knees, letting the water soak her all the way through. Then her mental picture is interrupted as she sees Clint's fingers tighten on top of the door and hears a series of loud gasps, and she knows that she’s waited too long.

A few seconds later, the water stops, and his hand grabs the towel that was hanging over the door, bringing it into the stall so that he can dry himself off.

When he opens the door, the towel is wrapped around his hips, and he just looks clean and refreshed, like someone coming out of a normal, everyday shower.

“Sorry for making you wait,” he says, a self-satisfied grin across his face. Whether he means making her wait for the shower or making her wait for sex is left ambiguous.

“You’re going to catch it for that,” she warns, bumping her hip into his side, and he has to grab the towel to keep it from falling. 

His grin gets bigger. “I can’t wait.”

When they’re both showered and dressed, they leave the room together, and everyone, Rhodey included, is at the kitchen table, enjoying an extravagant brunch. All eyes turn to them as they enter, and for a few seconds, nobody says anything.

Then Natasha says, “ _You're welcome_ ,” pointedly, and the tension is broken.

Bobbi leaves Clint to the jackals at the table and walks over to where Bucky’s standing by the countertop burners, pouring whisked eggs into a pan for an omelet. She leans over the pan and breathes in deeply, realizing that she's famished. When she stands back, she notices that Bucky is giving her a _look_ , his eyes dancing with laughter.

“What?” she says.

“‘ _We’re a platonic something_ ,’” he quotes, doing an awful falsetto impression of her.

“Shut up.” Bobbi tries hard to fight a smile. “Anyway, look who’s talking. We all know about that kiss; your door was wide open.”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten about it, what with _your_ news. You’re glowing, by the way.”

“Ugh, you sound like you’re trying to think of a subtle way to ask if I’m pregnant.”

He laughs. “Why, are you?”

“No!”

Clint walks up to them, stopping behind her and leaning against the counter. “This all looks really good,” he says. The counter and table are covered with food, organized between various platters and bowls: stacks of hot pancakes, sliced bananas, syrup, fresh blueberries, grapefruit slices, croissants and danishes, and a box of cornflakes, just in case. “What’s the occasion?”

“Brain food,” Daisy says. “We’re strategizing today.”

Once they've finished eating, Rhodey lays out a pile of papers with photos stapled to them on the table. “These are all of the employees of the two targeted clinics whose first or last names begin with a G or P.”

They pass the pages around, skimming the biographies and family histories of the people who may or may not be trying to test a dangerous virus on the general population. Nothing sticks out to Bobbi, and no one else mentions anything, either. 

“They all look pretty standard,” Rhodey says. “But everyone has loved ones, and most people aren't completely incorruptible.”

“Okay, let's memorize these and move on, then,” Daisy says. She taps the table with her pointer finger to get everyone's attention. “Our Plan A is to intercept the shipment. That means we'll need to stake out the clinics. Starting from Monday morning. It’d be best if we had people both on the inside and outside, but obviously no faces that they’ll recognize.”

Clint frowns. “We don’t want to put civilians in danger.”

“That’s the problem,” Daisy responds. “In theory, we’d just need someone to go in needing stitches or something, with a hidden camera, but they’d need to sneak around, and who knows what happens if they get caught. Unless anyone has a suggestion, I think the best we can do is stake the place out from the outside, and send one person inside to do a sweep at night.” No one argues, so she continues. “I’d split you up into teams, but first, we need to make sure that the plan is still up to date. That they didn't change the locations or the date or anything else we think we know.”

“If we had someone on the inside...” Rhodey says. “How about Taskmaster?”

Natasha looks skeptical. “Taskmaster is, A, a supervillain who, B, double agents for S.H.I.E.L.D.—why would he help us?”

“Well…” Bobbi says, “I think he has a crush on me. Or, at least, he did until I blew a hole in his skull. While brainwashed,” she adds quickly, looking at Clint.

“I trust your judgment, dear,” Clint says sweetly, prompting Natasha to raise her eyebrows at Bobbi. Those four words—he can't understand what it means to her, except he _does_.

Daisy snorts and brings them back to the topic at hand. “Well, knowing him, that’d just make it stronger. Anyway, he’s always been need-to-know, so he probably doesn’t even know that we’re not part of S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. If he’s even still working for them. Hill might have cut ties after that whole mess. From what I heard, you basically fireballed all of A.I.M. Island on your way out,” she says to Bobbi.

“Aww, man, I hope he’s okay,” Clint says, and everyone looks at him. “What? I'm just saying.”

“He’s alive, but Hill might not know it,” Daisy says. “If she hasn’t been in contact with him, then he doesn’t know about any of the changes. Or maybe she said something, but he doesn’t remember—you know how he is. I can get a message to him to arrange a meetup tomorrow night.”

While they’re cleaning up the kitchen, Bucky brings up a question. “What if we’re not successful in preventing it from getting out?”

“That would be really bad,” Bobbi says. “The people who came into contact with it would either die or become easily manipulated, which would help A.I.M. with its political goals… in other words, a disaster.”

“What about an antidote?” Rhodey asks. “I know you didn’t find anything, but it seems irresponsible, even for evil scientists, to engineer and spread a virus without a cure. What if the wrong person caught it?”

Bobbi shrugs. “They might think of it as a necessary sacrifice. But maybe. Maybe there are people at the top who think they’re an exception to the rule. If we have Taskmaster, we can have him look into it.”

“And if they don’t?” Daisy asks. “What would it take for you to create one, given a sample of the virus?”

“The question is less ‘Can it be done’ and more ‘Can it be done before people start to die.’”

“Thank you, and the answer?” 

“To the latter, doubtful, to the former, hopefully. It's worth a shot. If we can get our hands on a sample.... I'll need resources, a lab, assistants, and so on. Eventually, we're going to have to come out of hiding.”

Daisy waves it away. “Well, that's a discussion for later.”

“Why?” Bobbi asks. “Don't get me wrong, I'm having just as much fun in this little cocoon as anyone, but what does S.H.I.E.L.D. have on us? They can't hurt us anymore. So why are we still letting them restrict our movements?”

“They can't hurt us, but they can detain us,” Daisy says. “Natasha and Clint quit without notice, I ordered an assassination, Rhodey reneged on a verbal agreement—”

“Ha!” Rhodey says.

“You don't know their lawyers, trust me,” Daisy says to him, and then turns back to Bobbi, “and, technically speaking, you're MIA.”

“Fuck that,” Clint practically snarls. “They don’t get to—”

“Babe, it’s—” Bobbi starts.

“I _know_ , Barton,” Daisy says at the same time. “Believe me, I know. Whoever wants to confront Hill, confront her all you want— _after_ we stop this attack.”

Bobbi wants to tell him to let it go—she’s fine, and Maria was just making a tough call under strained circumstances, and in any case, she can speak for herself—but then she remembers his face when he woke up with his memory restored, his frustration at having been manipulated, having had his choice taken away, on top of what had happened to her. She doesn’t envy Hill when this is over.

 

 

With the next steps of their plan clear, the afternoon is set aside for sparring. Bobbi disappears with another burner phone, and the rest of them set up at their regular place in the park.

Natasha faces off against Bucky first. He’s patient, waiting for her to make the first move. She starts cautiously, with punches and jabs to distract him and then quickly following it up with a roundhouse kick, but he anticipates it and spins out of the way, then completes the spin with a wheel kick that knocks her off her feet. She manages to roll into it and bounce back, adrenaline kicking in.

They keep going, with him easily countering her every move. At some point while barely avoiding getting her ass kicked, she comes face-to-face for the first time with the reality that her memory loss affects more than just her love life—they’ve clearly sparred before, and he knows her style and can anticipate many of her moves, but she’s fighting blind. She tries to mix it up, do things she usually wouldn’t—hit where she would normally feint, block where she would normally duck, and it works to keep him on his toes, but it also makes her slower than she should be. Eventually, he pins her to the mat, holding her in place from the side.

“ _Unf!_ ” With a grunt, knocks his arms out of the way and slams her feet to the ground, creating a bridge with her hips so that she can flip him over, get on top, and direct her weight strategically to block his escape.

He’s sweaty and grinning at her as he goes slack, and she thinks she won, but she’s not sure she deserved it—that last escape was easier than it should have been against someone of his caliber.

“You got me, Natasha.”

She narrows her eyes. “You let me win.”

“No. I was overconfident. Not the same thing. You won fair and square.” He holds her gaze until she relaxes her glare.

Her thighs bracket his hips, holding him in place, and she knows it’s time to get up, but she’s enjoying the position. The longer she stays there, the more comfortable she gets, and she’s tempted to sink into it. He’s watching her with something that looks like delight, and she really, really likes the way he looks prone underneath her. Their friends are all watching, though, so she gets up, brushes herself off, and lends him a hand up. They clear out, giving the mat to Daisy and Rhodey.

Once each of them has gone a few times, they pack up and head back so that they can clean up for dinner. They’ve been invited over to Rhodey’s aunt’s house (he’s assured them that she understands discretion), and Natasha dresses up somewhat, opting for ankle boots and a black dress that skims her knees.

They drive over in both cars, parking on the street in front of a row of townhouses. Rhodey leads them over to the house and rings the doorbell, and a few seconds later, a teenage girl opens the door and shouts, “They’re here!”

“Come in,” she says, stepping to the side, and they spill into the house as Rhodey’s aunt and uncle come to greet them. The family consists of his aunt, who’s much younger than Natasha imagined and insists on being called Tamara instead of Mrs. James (“With all of the people and stories here, I don’t even know if I count as an elder to any of you!”—which, she has a point), her husband Michael, and sixteen-year-old Samantha, who’s just started her junior year of high school.

Bobbi hands over a bottle of wine that she’d picked up earlier while out, and they all make conversation in the living room until a buzzer goes off in the kitchen. At that point, the whole group is transferred to a dining room set for company, with a cream tablecloth decorated with fall leaves, and matching cream dishes. Their hosts start bringing out food, and Rhodey gets up to help, but Tamara gives him a scathing look, and he sits back down.

Once the food is served, the conversation begins.

“So, which Avengers are you exactly?” Tamara asks. “I have to admit I don't always keep up with the roster changes.”

“Oh, I'm not an Avenger,” Daisy says.

“Right now, we’re the only active Avengers.” Natasha gestures to herself and to Clint. “Clint is Hawkeye; I’m the Black Widow. But most of us have been Avengers at some point or another.”

“I was Captain America for a while,” Bucky says, and Natasha’s not sure whether or not he’s joking, which disturbs her much more than she’s ever likely to admit. She takes her cue from the rest of the table—no one is laughing, so it’s probably true.

“How do your families deal with the stress?” Michael asks. “Jimmy’s parents get so worried. Not that much has changed since he was in the Air Force, of course. They’re in all these support groups for non-powered family members of superheroes—do you have that?”

There’s an awkward silence, as Natasha looks around a table full of orphans. Rhodey’s an exception to the rule, having kept ties with his family even after going public, but very few of her colleagues, including almost all of the ones at this table, had anything close to a normal childhood.

“Actually, many of us lost parents at a young age, or had to cut ties with them,” Bobbi says. “It’s just safer.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s no problem,” Bobbi says. “We all have public identities—there are some Avengers who don’t, for that reason.”

“That’s right, Jimmy didn’t go public for a long time,” Tamara said. She turns to her husband. “Remember when we found out? Roberta was _not_ pleased.”

“It was inevitable,” Rhodey says with a grin. “Everyone who hangs out with Tony Stark for long enough eventually puts on the suit.”

Samantha’s phone buzzes, and she takes it out, reads something, and starts to compose a text, which causes her mother to cough, “Sam!”

“I’m sorry, just one second,” Samantha says. “My friends are picking me up at eight, and I promised Lila I’d Skype her before then. I’m just letting her know...” her voice trails off as her focus shifts back to the phone.

“Well, send her our love,” Tamara says in a resigned voice, and you can just hear her thinking, _Kids these days_. Samantha grunts but doesn’t look up.

“Lila’s my niece,” Rhodey fills in. “She’s Sam’s age, lives in Atlanta.”

“ _She’s_ going to put on the suit one day,” Samantha says, still not looking up. “At least, that’s what she says.”

“Not until she’s eighteen.” Rhodey pours himself some juice, then looks around to see if anyone else nearby wants some. Daisy pushes her glass forward and thanks him as he pours.

“Have you had time to explore the city at all?” Tamara asks. “I’m sure you’re busy, but there’s so much to see.”

Clint shakes his head. “Not really, unfortunately.”

“Well, if you find some extra time, I teach sculpting over at PAFA—the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts—and we have a wonderful museum. Philly’s got so much to see, so people don’t always make it over there, but it’s really a beautiful museum and it’s not far from the traditional tourist attractions.”

“Thanks for the recommendation,” Bobbi says. “We might actually have a little bit of free time within the next few days.”

“How long will you be in town?” Michael asks.

Daisy and Bobbi exchange a glance, and before anyone can hint about hiding, or not hiding, from S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha plays the diplomat and says, “It depends on a few things.”

“I suppose you can’t talk much about ongoing projects in your line of work,” Tamara says, and then she starts talking about the ongoing projects at _her_ work, segueing into a story about a Windows update that made everyone lose all of their bookmarks and mail folders, which is something they can all relate to.

 

 

Despite a long and laborious night, and the nice, warm body next to her, Bobbi wakes up early the next day, looking forward to a day off. Natasha's big day, or what she hopes will be Natasha's big day, isn't until tomorrow, so they’ve decided to take Tamara James’s advice and be tourists for the day, and their schedule is packed.

Rhodey booked them some discount passes the night before so that they can fit in as many attractions as they have time for. The morning is spent on historical, revolutionary-era sites and museums: Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Museum of the American Revolution. The African American Museum is next, and when they finish that, they realize that it’s past one in the afternoon and they haven’t eaten anything, so they start walking in the direction of Reading Terminal Market. It’s a Saturday, and the sidewalks are bustling in this part of town, so they’re walking in a pack, when suddenly a voice from the crowd calls out, “Clint?”

They stop walking, moving to the edge of the sidewalk, and it’s a redheaded woman with tortoiseshell glasses wearing a pink sweater and a dark gray pencil skirt, a tan trench coat completing the look. She’s with a tall, wiry Asian man with short hair, dressed in a matching stylishly preppy outfit.

Clint’s hand tightens around Bobbi’s for a split second, and then he says, “Maryanne?”

The woman laughs, almost in disbelief. “How _are_ you?”

“Good, good, you?”

“I’m great! It’s been so long since...we met.” The way that Clint’s face turns red, it’s obvious to everyone there that _met_ is a polite euphemism for _boned_ , but she’s holding hands with the man at her side and is clearly not hitting on Clint, whatever their history may be. Bobbi has no idea who this woman is, but she’s finding this whole scene rather endearing.

Maryanne turns to the man with her. “Kev, this is Clint Barton.”

“Uh, nice to meet you,” Clint says, and it takes him a few seconds to remember to let go of Bobbi’s hand so that he can stick out his own hand.

“Kevin Yoon,” the man responds, shaking Clint’s hand with a firm, confident grip.

“Kevin’s my fiancé,” Maryanne adds.

Clint is so uncomfortable, and Bobbi is so amused. He looks lost, and he hasn’t let go of Maryanne’s fiancé’s hand, so she nudges him to do his part of the introductions.

“Right. Bobbi, this is Maryanne, I—she helped me work out a case a few years ago down in Florida. Maryanne, this is my—” then he cuts himself off in the middle of the word and gives Bobbi a panicked look, like they probably should have discussed this, but it’s been less than forty-eight hours, and they didn’t expect that they would already be introducing each other to new people.

Luckily, Maryanne smooths it over. “Mockingbird, of course! It’s so nice to meet you. This is going to sound really weird, and I promise I’m not a stalker, but I read all about it in the news when it turned out you were alive, and I was really happy for you guys.”

“Hey, what about when it turned out I was alive?” Clint asks.

“Oh, yeah.... That was good, too.”

Kevin laughs.

Clint introduces the rest of the group. The couple seem a little intimidated by Natasha (to be fair, the media is not her friend), but they’re very nice.

“Do you live in Philadelphia?” Bobbi asks.

“Yeah, we moved here about half a year ago,” Maryanne says. “We love it. I guess you’re passing through?”

“We’re actually kind of undercover,” Bucky says.

“More or less,” says Clint.

“Give or take,” Bobbi adds.

“I see. Well, we won’t say anything, then.” Maryanne has a smile that says she’s intelligent and trustworthy, and Bobbi decides she likes her. “We’ve got to be going, but it was really nice to meet all of you. And good to see you, Clint.”

“You, too,” Clint says. The two of them hesitate and then go in for a hug.

As they walk away, Bobbi can hear Maryanne whisper to Kevin, “I _told_ you I knew Hawkeye!”

Bobbi catches Clint’s eye and laughs.

When they reach the market, they explore for a while, checking out the sights and the smells of the different stands, until the insane grilled cheese sandwich selection from MeltKraft hooks them, and the choice of what to have for lunch is unanimous. They grab a table nearby and sit down with their sandwiches.

Bobbi takes a bite of her lunch and moans. “Oh my God. This is absolutely the best thing I've ever put in my mouth.”

“Well, that's just hurtful,” Clint says.

She laughs. “Try yours, and you’ll see what I mean.”

He takes a bite and as he closes his mouth around the food, he makes a sound like hers, closing his eyes. After an extended amount of time chewing, he swallows and says, “Yeah. Sorry, babe, I’m leaving you for this sandwich.”

“This is the part where someone’s supposed to talk about how long a sandwich lasts versus a man, right?” Natasha says.

Daisy coughs. “The sandwich lasts longer, in my experience.”

“Oh, no.” Clint cringes. “I forgot to watch my mouth in front of the K-I-D.”

“Oh, please. I’m nineteen, not nine. And I’ve had boyfriends. Not recently, though.” Daisy pauses thoughtfully. “The last time I dated a guy, Nick Fury dropped him off a cliff. So I switched to girls. Because he has that whole benevolent sexist thing going on, you know, so maybe next time he’ll be more forgiving.”

Everyone stares at her. “Uh, how much of that is true?” Rhodey asks.

“The benevolent sexist thing is definitely true,” Natasha says, and Bobbi nods in agreement.

Daisy shrugs. “Except for the cause and effect, it’s all true. I mean, okay, this boyfriend had betrayed us to Hydra and gotten one of our teammates killed, so it’s not like it was completely out of nowhere.”

They decide to visit PAFA after lunch, and when they catch Tamara between classes, she’s very excited to see that they took her recommendation.

“Even Jimmy hasn’t been here in at least fifteen years!” she says, slanting an admonishing eye at him, and he looks sheepish.

She doesn’t have time to show them around, she tells them, but she takes a map and circles the exhibits they need to see, which ends up being most of them. There’s a lot of work by current and former students, which is pretty cool, and some really striking modern sculptures and paintings by an artist named KAWS which catches Bobbi’s eye. When they finally leave, it’s getting late, so they call it a day and head back to the apartment.

 

 

Hours later, Natasha crouches across from Bobbi in a dark alley, waiting. They’re both suited up, so that Taskmaster won’t suspect that anything’s different. He’s running five minutes late, and they’ve been hiding—her behind a dumpster, Bobbi in the empty space next to the boarded-up window of somebody’s basement apartment—for twenty minutes, and her legs are starting to cramp.

She hears footsteps approach, and a few seconds later, there he is. He scans the area, then walks further in, to where they’re covered by shadows. Once he’s no longer visible from the street, Natasha stands up and Bobbi crawls out of her hiding spot, revealing themselves.

“How do you walk around on the street in that mask and not get stopped by the police?” Bobbi asks, brushing off her hair and costume. “You’ve got to be wanted for something or other.”

“Diplomatic immunity is the best superpower you can have. I highly recommend it. Actually, it’s not the police who are the problem; it’s the little kids bursting out crying whenever they see me.”

“Uh-huh.” Bobbi crosses her arms. Natasha walks over and stands beside her, facing off with him.

“So it’s the Widow and the Mockingbird,” he says with a gleam in his eye, his skull mask hiding the leer that Natasha imagines is a permanent feature of his face. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We have word of a covert attack that A.I.M. plans to carry out in New York in three days,” Natasha says. “We need information.” She gives him the basic rundown of what they know. 

“It sounds like you have everything you need to stop it. What could you want from me?”

“The information was accurate as of about a week ago,” Natasha says. “We need to know if anything has changed.”

“We also want to get our hands on an antidote, if they have one. Or, if they don’t, we need a sample of the virus, so that we can create the antidote,” Bobbi says. “If it comes down to that, be careful when handling it; we have reason to believe the virus is extremely contagious.”

“Also, if you can find out which clinic employees are in their pocket, and what their weapons are,” Natasha adds.

“My talents are wasted on information-gathering.” Taskmaster sighs and shakes his head. “But I'll do it. Should I be calling Coulson once I'm done?” 

“Coulson put us in charge on this one; we’ll be your liaisons for this assignment,” Natasha says. “You can reach me at this number.” She hands him a sheet of paper with the number of one of her burner phones, figuring it's worth the risk. “The phone will be off until tomorrow evening at 9 PM. Call me then.”

“I'll treasure this,” he says, folding the paper in half and smoothing the crease almost lovingly.

Natasha fights a shudder. “Let’s try that once more, with less feeling.”

“You’re the boss, Boss.” Taskmaster puts the paper away into a pocket and salutes.

“That’s more like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi and Clint's smutty one-shot takes place during this chapter and can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158984).
> 
> The Hawkeye miniseries from 2003 is kind of (very) cheesy, but one thing I liked about it in comparison to Fraction’s series is that Hawkeye doesn’t sleep with the vulnerable woman he’s trying to protect—rather, he has a fling with the librarian who helps him solve the case. Which is a thousand percent less sketchy. (Did that sounds sarcastic? I didn't mean it in a sarcastic way.)


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha’s big day.

Natasha turns the keys and shuts off the car engine. She turns to Bucky and Rhodey. "Let's go, then."

They leave the garage and head towards the address Hank gave Bobbi to meet up with the rest of the group. Natasha’s out in front, walking briskly, with the other two flanking her. It doesn’t take them long to reach their destination, a fancy Upper East Side apartment building. Bobbi, Clint, and Daisy are already there waiting, and Bobbi gives a small wave as they walk up.

“He’s not here yet?” Rhodey asks, glancing at his watch.

“We’re still early,” Daisy says. There’s a bench nearby, and she goes to lean against the back of it, facing the rest of the group, who stand around in a semi-circle formation. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

Clint, standing next to Natasha, frowns. “Maybe this is a mistake,” he says, under his breath.

“Don’t be a wimp.” Natasha shakes her head at him.

“Can you really say you trust her?”

She crosses her arms. “If I refused help from people because of their questionable pasts, I’d be quite the hypocrite, don’t you think?”

That shuts him up, and no one has anything else to say. Natasha looks around the group, making eye contact with Bucky, who nods at her, his expression telling her that whatever happens, it’s going to be okay.

He’d approached her earlier in the day, before they left the house. “Hey. If this doesn’t work…”

“If this doesn’t work, then nothing will,” she’d said.

“If this doesn’t work, then let’s go out tonight, just the two of us.”

“You gonna take advantage of me, Barnes?” she’d teased him. “All vulnerable and defenseless…”

Giving her a smoldering look, he’d said, “Vulnerable and defenseless isn’t my kink.”

“Oh? What is?”

“One way or another, you’ll know the answer to that by the end of the week.”

She smiles to herself now, remembering the shiver that had gone up her spine at the words.

Her thoughts are interrupted when Rhodey says, “There he is.” He's looking over his shoulder to the right, where Hank is walking towards them.

He speeds up he approaches. “Good morning, everyone. You’re on time, that’s good.”

“Let me guess; she doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” Clint says.

“Be good,” Bobbi says to him. She turns to Hank, saying, “Thanks so much for setting this up.”

“What is this place?” Daisy asks, looking through the door into the lobby.

“It’s one of her personal properties. She thought it would be better to meet you alone, with no distractions.”

They walk inside, and Hank goes up to the doorman, who calls up and confirms that they’re expected, then directs them to the elevator.

When the elevator doors open, they’re let out into a smaller reception room. There’s one other door, which opens up as they approach, and there she is. Standing tall with one hand on the door and another on her hip, wearing her new black latex costume, she looks as proud and as regal as ever: Emma Frost, the White Queen of the X-Men.

Her lips curl on one side as she looks them over. “Well, well. I thought I’d never see the day when a group of Avengers showed up on my doorstep for help, and they actually said ‘please.’”

"Emma," Hank warns, frowning.

"What? I’m being nice, Henry, just like you asked." She turns around and walks into the apartment, gesturing with her hand for the rest of them to follow, which they do.

Clint snorts. "This is you nice?"

She stops short and looks over her shoulder at him like he’s a mosquito. “You’re not on fire, are you?”

Clint crosses his arms and gets ready to retort, but Bobbi places her hand on his arm and cuts him off, saying, “Thank you for your help, Ms. Frost.”

“Believe it or not,” Emma says, “I’m happy to help. Despite what your internalized anti-mutant prejudice would have you believe—yes, I know you have nothing against mutants, dear—the X-Men have a varied roster of members with many useful talents, if only the Avengers would reach out _nicely_.”

“We’re not here as Avengers,” Natasha cuts in. “This is personal business.”

"Well." Emma looks her over. "I do owe you a personal favor, don't I? And I have to admit to having a bit of a romantic streak. So, like I said, I really am quite happy to help."

“What do I need to do?” Natasha asks.

“Please, sit.” Emma indicates a white armchair further into the room. Natasha cautiously takes a seat, surveying her surroundings. The room has a Victorian feel, with white furniture that's all flourishes and curves, and a gold and pink medallion rug stretched out over hardwood floors. The walls are covered with paintings and mirrors, all with gaudy golden frames, and long rose curtains frame the large, gridded window. The White Queen likes her comforts.

“Tea?” Emma asks, after everyone is seated. She walks over to a side table with a teapot and a tray of cakes and wafers. Natasha’s quite sure that none of them are particularly craving tea right now, but Emma goes through the motions, bringing out the plate and china teacups and pouring out the tea. It’s meant to be a comforting ritual, and Natasha supposes that it is. It certainly speaks to her Russian upbringing, making her feel a little bit more at ease.

Not completely, though. She’s conscious of the fact that this is a last ditch attempt, and it feels different than the other things they’ve tried. Emma Frost is the most powerful living telepath in the world, so if she can't help, Natasha might have to resign herself to waiting ten years for her memories to return naturally, if at all. Rodchenko had said she “may begin to remember,” hadn’t he? That’s hardly a guarantee.

Emma starts to speak. “We’ll go into your mind together, and explore your subconscious. It’ll seem to have a physical form, or setting, which differs from person to person, even from time to time. It may take a long time to find what we’re looking for, or your subconscious may call it up in anticipation of the trip, placing the memories, whatever form they’re in now, right in front of you.” She stops and looks at Natasha. “Any questions?”

“I'm ready.”

‘ _Good._ ’ Emma's not speaking out loud anymore, but directly into her head, and it feels like the sound is coming from everywhere at once. Natasha puts down her empty teacup and swallows. ‘ _Relax. We'll be going into your mind in just a minute._ ’

Out loud, Emma addresses everyone else. “This may take a while. There's another sitting room just over there; please make yourselves at home, and try not to be too loud.”

“Let's go,” Hank says, leading everyone out.

‘ _Close your eyes,_ ’ says Emma's head-voice.

Natasha does.

 

 

They’re in the foyer of a house. There’s a central staircase straight ahead of her and rooms to both her left and right, but no front door or windows or light fixtures. Still, there's plenty of light, as if the house is lit from within.

There’s a steady thumping sound, occurring steadily about once every 1.3 seconds, which means it must be her heartbeat. After a few beats, she gets used to the sound, and it fades into the background, barely noticeable.

"What on earth?" Emma says. Natasha looks over and notices that the other woman is a little shorter than she remembers. Looking down, she sees that Emma is sinking through the floor, which feels perfectly solid to her.

"Here." She extends a hand, and Emma reaches for her, but their hands pass through one another like air.

Emma clenches her jaw in concentration and manages to float upwards, the top of her head disappearing into the ceiling. Then she moves back down, finally settling just above the floor. "It seems that I can't touch or affect anything in your subconscious," Emma says. "I've never seen anything this advanced from someone who wasn't a telepath themselves."

“Yeah, well, blame Tony Stark.”

“I always do, darling.”

Natasha snorts and peeks into the dining room on her left. There's a long table—the kitchen table from their safe house in Philadelphia, in fact—laid out across the room, and the whole group is sitting at it, playing a tabletop game—Pandemic, if she recognizes it correctly. Everyone looks normal, just like their real-world counterparts, except for Bucky, who's pale and transparent like a ghost. There's an empty chair in the middle of the table, and she walks over and sits down in it. 

“You're just in time,” Daisy says, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair at the head of the table. “We were beginning to think you weren't going to show up.”

Natasha looks back at Emma. “Is this really them?” 

“It's your mental image of them,” Emma answers. “The only consciousnesses in here are yours and mine.”

Natasha turns her attention back to the table. “It's your turn,” Clint says to her.

There are a few cards lying face up in front of her, but the pictures and words on them are fuzzy, leading her to believe that playing the game according to the rules won't give her any answers. 

“I'd like to ask a question,” she says, as if that’s one of the game options. They all look at her, and she says, “Why is Bucky only halfway here? Where's the rest of him?” 

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks. 

“This is how he always was,” Bobbi says.

Rhodey continues. “That's all there is to him.”

She looks around the table at their impassive faces, trying to figure out if there's a catch.

“They're not going to tell you anything,” Emma says. “I think they're automatons. Let's keep looking.”

Natasha stands up and leaves the table, and the images of her friends don't react at all, leading her to agree with Emma's conclusion.

They go into the kitchen and find a completely different scene. Nick Fury Sr.is there, and so is Maria Hill, and the two of them are going at it with frying pans, hitting each other like untrained children. It’s not at all a bad representation of how she sees their power struggles. In the corner of the room, Steve, Sharon, and Sam are watching the scene in exasperation.

“Stop!” Natasha says, and everyone straightens up, hands behind their backs, at full attention.

“What can you tell me about the Winter Soldier?” she asks the room.

“Who?” Steve says.

Natasha looks at Emma, who shrugs.

“Fine. Let's keep going, then,” she says. She notices a door at the end of the kitchen, and when she opens it, she sees stairs leading down to a basement, where she can hear screams. She makes her way down the stairs cautiously, stopping when she sees it: a sea of twisting bodies, all falling down but not actually reaching the ground, an infinite loop of last moments.

She recognizes Ivan first, but it's Ivan as she knew him when she was younger and he took care of her, not the monster he'd turned himself into. Then she sees Jasper Sitwell, and then the others, friend and foe and everything in between, and the memories overtake her. All of them in one place, their faces twisted in agony, their moans and screams filling her ears. She turns to the side and heaves, but nothing comes out.

“Let's go,” Emma says, but Natasha is frozen in place. She repeats it, louder and sharper. “Let's _go_!” 

Startled out of her stupor, Natasha turns heel and runs, not stopping until she's back at the entrance of the house.

“What _was_ that?” Emma asks.

Natasha squeezes her eyes shut, trying to block it out. “Those were all the people I've ever killed.”

“Oh.” She can’t quite tell from Emma’s tone of voice whether she’s impressed or sympathetic—probably both, knowing her.

She takes deep breaths and opens her eyes, focusing on the walls in front of her, trying to get her mind off of the image seared into it. 

“Do you need to take a moment?” Emma asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, that would be good.” She leans over, bracing her hands on her upper thighs, and continues with the deep breaths. Bucky’s face pops into her head, and it helps center her. “Okay. I’m ready.”

The living room is much less stressful, couches and chairs full of Avengers and former Avengers, chatting and joking with each other. Tony, Janet, Hanks both Pym and McCoy, Logan, Herc, Thor, T’Challa, Monica, Jessica, Carol, Mar-Vell, Quasar, Jen, Pietro, Wanda, Vision, Simon...all talking over one another and laughing together. They’re so intent on their conversations that they don’t look up when she walks in. She scans the room, looking for anything that might be a hint, but there’s nothing there.

At the far end of the room, there's a set of shuttered folding doors, a glowing red light coming from behind them. She walks over, Emma by her side, and opens them up—they catch on something, so she needs to push them open with force—and behind it, a literal red room, a red-tinged light coloring everything inside.

“Well, that's a little on the nose,” Natasha mutters. She looks down to see what it was that was blocking the door.

It's the toe of a boot. Attached to a prone, unmoving body, a woman in a black catsuit with long blonde hair. 

She knows instinctively who it must be, and she doesn't want to look, but she needs to, so she turns the body over to see Yelena Belova, her lifeless eyes staring up at nothing.

“Your subconscious is really something,” Emma comments. “How come she's not downstairs with all your other victims?” 

“I didn't kill her,” Natasha says. “I couldn't save her, but I didn't kill her.”

“I have too many of those. Mostly younger, though.” Emma looks Yelena’s corpse over and clucks her tongue. “Poor girl.”

They look around the room, full of the ghosts of girls and young women of varying ages, including a few different versions of a younger Natalia, training to fight and kill. Overseeing them are the authority figures Natasha remembers from the Red Room: Headmistress, Lyudmila Kudrin, Grigor Pchelintsov, Rodchenko, all of them. There's a television in the room, playing the same ballet lessons she was forced to watch in order to make her believe that she was a ballerina, the drills on repeat. Natasha shudders. 

“Let's go,” she tells Emma. “There's nothing good that comes out of the Red Room.”

Having explored all of the first floor and the basement, they head to the main staircase. Natasha rests her hand on the polished railing while Emma floats alongside her, until they reach the second floor landing. It’s a wide, open space, with two closed doors to the left and right, and one straight ahead. 

The closest door is the one to their left, so Natasha walks up and opens the door a crack. It’s a bedroom, with the lights out, except for a single red candle on a dresser, its flame flickering.

The first person she sees is Matt, dressed in his Daredevil costume, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. He’s surrounded by shadows, featureless human shapes standing behind him. At the sound of the door opening, he cocks his head. “Oh, good,” he says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

That’s when the shadows become recognizable figures, the flame from the candle slowly growing stronger so that their faces and bodies are lit up: Karen Page, Elektra Natchios, Milla Donovan, Heather Glenn, and more. All of Matt’s exes, as well as his current girlfriend, former New York Assistant District Attorney Kirsten McSomethingOrOther. Some women she’s seen passing glimpses of, but whose names she doesn’t even know. They look up at her, one at a time. Elektra scowls and adopts a fighting pose, but Milla and Karen smile at her, and the rest of them have various looks of curiosity on their faces.

Emma floats behind her to peer into the room. “Oh, dear Lord,” she says. “I think this room might have more people than the room with the people you’d killed.”

Natasha looks around the room, wide-eyed. “Yeah. He’s got...baggage.”

Emma makes a noncommittal _mmmm_ sound. “This is fascinating. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to delve into it, but this is fascinating.”

Natasha closes the door and backs away from the room. “Maybe we should split up,” she says. “It’ll probably be faster.”

“All right.” Emma floats off to the next door down, and Natasha turns to the room on the right.

The room is not quite as dark as the last one, but the light is muted. It’s an exact replica of the bedroom she shared with Alexi, down to the last detail. The dark wood floors, the bed with the ruffled skirt, even the drapes.... Curious, she walks over to the drapes and pushes them aside, but there are no windows. No windows anywhere in the house—she wonders if that’s normal, or if it says something about her. Moving over to the wardrobe, she pulls it open, and she sees his Red Guardian outfit hanging up on a hanger, next to the Ronin costume. This is an anachronism, she knows, but she can’t separate the young man who was her husband from the enemy that he later turned out to be.

Alexi’s not in the room, which is good, because she doesn’t want to face him. Turning around, she leaves this room and continues to the next.

This room has plenty of light, so much that it almost feels like she’s outside.. The walls are painted yellow, with a cute trim of cartoon animals running all along the room. The only furniture, though, is an empty crib made out of granite. At the head of the crib, there’s a date engraved into the stone: November 3, 1944. It’s the date when her first husband, Nikolai, died, when she was shot by German soldiers and injured so badly she’d lost their unborn child. She rarely thinks about those days, that relationship, literally a lifetime ago.

She turns around, looking around the nearly empty room, and that’s when she notices it. The dimensions of the room, they're not right. The room isn't as big as it should be.

She measures the wall with her steps, then repeats the process in the hallway, and finally goes back to Alexi’s room to do the same thing there, and her suspicions are confirmed. The walls in the adjacent rooms don’t quite meet.

"Emma!" she calls, but the sound doesn't travel far enough. She goes out to the hallway and runs into Emma there. "What’s here?" she asks, putting her hand on the wall where the two rooms should have met.

Emma leans to the left and the top of her body disappears through the wall for a second. She then emerges, and says, “There's a closet or something back there. This must be exactly what we’re looking for.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, scared all of a sudden. She thinks of Bucky, the way he looks at her like he knows all of her rusty edges and dirty secrets, the way he doesn’t shy away from her, and she swallows. This is it. She looks around for something heavy to break down the wall.

"I wouldn’t recommend that," Emma says.

How did she know what—oh, right. Telepath. "Why not?"

"You don’t know how stable the foundation is. You could accidentally destroy part of your psyche. There must be another way in."

It must be some sort of trapdoor. If so, there should be a catch, or a crack in the wall where the door is hidden. Or maybe the door’s been painted over, which means there should be a depression somewhere. She runs her fingers against the wall, trying to feel for a fissure or an indentation, but she doesn't find anything. 

“Why not try knocking?” Emma suggests.

What does she have to lose, right? Natasha raises a closed hand against the wall and knocks twice.

It takes a few seconds, but something changes. A slot opens up in the wall, revealing a small shelf with—she picks it up and examines it—a fingerstick, like what diabetics use to test their glucose levels. 

“I guess that's for me, huh?” she asks Emma.

“It seems so.”

Natasha puts the lancet against her left pointer finger and pushes a white button on the stick, which pricks into her skin sharply, releasing a drop of blood.

“My subconscious self bleeds?” she says.

“If that's how you have it set up, then yes,” Emma responds. 

“So weird.” She squeezes her finger to release more blood, which is then drawn into the stick, then presses her finger against her hip to stop the bleeding. “Now what?”

“You could put it back.”

So she does, placing the stick back onto the small shelf. The wall closes back over it, and they wait. Soon, a sharp, almost laser-like light starts to draw an arched door on the wall, and then the wall underneath just disintegrates, leaving the entrance completely clear.

The space is narrow and cramped, like a partitioned-off home office, the width just enough for her and Emma to stand side by side. The length of the room matches the length of the surrounding rooms, and all the way on the other side, against the wall, she can see a beige two-drawer filing cabinet. She hurries over and gets on her knees to examine it, finding a single vertical bar blocking all of the drawers, locked by a single tiny padlock. Turning it over to look at the keyhole, she's frustrated to find it completely smooth, with nowhere to put a key.

"This is getting ridiculous," Natasha grumbles. She tries a few times to pull it apart with force, but nothing happens.

“There's always a way in,” Emma says.

“So helpful.” She leans over and looks closer, scrutinizing it for imperfections, but there's nothing. Next, she runs her fingers over the lock. Maybe there's a chip somewhere, or a groove— 

Her thumb slides over the empty space where the keyhole should have been, and at her touch, the lock pops open cleanly.

Natasha looks at the padlock in shock. “That's it?”

She sits there for a few seconds, staring, and then Emma asks, “Are you going to look?”

“Right.” She pulls the lock off and opens the bar, then starts going through the drawers. The top one is full of office supplies: pens, Post-it pads, a stapler, whiteboard markers, etc.

She tries the bottom drawer, which has some weight to it and opens more slowly, with a little bit of a drag to it, so she pulls it open, and— 

This is it.

The drawer is filled with what looks like stylized photos—about seven by ten inches, give or take a few fractions of an inch, each picture backed by a piece of cardboard, lined up one in front of the other in individual slip bags. Only they aren’t photos, they’re memories, and they’re moving.

“Oh, my God,” Emma says reverently. Natasha looks up at her, and her hand is covering her mouth, while her eyes are wide.

“My memories.” Natasha can hardly believe it, after all this time.

“Do you know what this means?” Emma says. “It means that the reason you’ve been unsuccessful in recovering your memories about the Winter Soldier isn't because they’ve been destroyed permanently; on the contrary: _you_ were hiding them. That Russian thug, he tried to overwrite your memories, he wanted to permanently warp them into something monstrous. But your subconscious sensed what was being done to it, and in order to protect them, it locked them away in here, beneath layers upon layers of protection. And look at them! Not one scratch.”

She feels like she’s standing at the edge of a precipice with wings on her back. And now, Emma’s words, they’re forcing her to redefine her entire experience. Her brain wasn’t permanently damaged, the bad guy didn’t win. She’s safe, and so are her memories. She saved herself.

But of course. She always saves herself.

Natasha can’t wait any longer. She pulls out a pile of memories and starts to flip through them, and each time she looks at one, the experience rushes back. There he is, fighting with her over Steve’s shield and stealing it; there she is, teaching him how to use it and how to carry himself as Captain America; there they are; training in the Red Room; flirting in S.H.I.E.L.D’s flying red convertible; walking together in the rain, laughing and kissing under a shared umbrella. There are unhappy memories, too: getting caught by their handlers, the shock and fear of seeing him in the cryogenic tube after they were caught, his brush with death in Sin’s attack on Washington. But the good ones overwhelm the bad ones by far. Memories of him taking her to meet his now-elderly sister, watching the news after his first public mission as the new Cap, kissing him, the amazed look on his face as she rose up above him.

_“You’re a star, James...the people love you.”_

There are some memories that make her blush and quickly angle the stack away so that Emma can’t see, X-rated interludes that actually make her jaw drop, some tamer kisses, public flirting… sneaking up on him in the shower in their few moments of happiness, before.

_“You were the one good thing in all of it.”_

Rescuing Sharon from the Red Skull, riding together on one motorcycle just for the fun of it, sneaking into his apartment while he was hosting the New Avengers and needing to be extra-stealthy because none of his new teammates were fans of her at the time…

The stack runs out, and she’s sitting in a pile of memories, feeling like she just finished a marathon. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she notices the drawer sliding just a fraction of an inch outwards on its own. Natasha takes the handle, and realizes that it opens more. She pulls the drawer out further, and sees a whole new set of plastic-wrapped memories.

“Oh my God, there’s more,” she says, incredulous. “Emma, there’s _more_.”

“I see that, darling.” Emma’s voice catches on the word ‘see.’

He’s on trial for his Winter Soldier past and Bernie Rosenthal is addressing the jury, they’re hunting Novokov together, confident that they’ll succeed, she’s rescuing him from gulag, he’s waiting patiently with Logan as she walks out of a refrigerator, they’re celebrating his birthday with a huge surprise party and she’s trying to fit a thousand candles on the cake before he shows up, they’re watching TV together in her apartment on a lazy evening, she’s making fun of him for reading those dumb Archie comic books, and on, and on, and on.

_“Will you wait for me?”_

_“If you’re lucky.”_

She keeps going until she finally runs out of memories, and she’s just—amazed. She looks up at Emma in wonder, and what she sees is practically a miracle: Emma Frost, famed Anti-Heroine Ice Queen with an exuberant smile on her face the likes of which Natasha has _never_ seen.

She hears a rush of footsteps, and just like that, they're back in the real world, surrounded by her friends, and her— _James_. Emma's turned to diamond, and Natasha herself is crying, which is ridiculous, and then she finds herself laughing at how ridiculous it all is, and she's not sure whether she's laughing or crying harder, but she's just so happy to be back.

"Natasha?" James says.

She can't stop laughing, and he bends down, looking concerned, and she just—she grabs him by the neck of his shirt, and pulls him to her and kisses him. 

He responds immediately, bringing his hands up to cradle her face, as they both move to their knees on the floor. She laughs into his mouth and he laughs into hers and then she opens her eyes and the entire world is his face, his sparkling eyes, the lines around his mouth when he smiles, the hints of stubble on his cheeks—her lover, her best friend, her home.

She can hear Bobbi and Clint whooping and cheering in the background, those absurd children, and she has all this joy inside her, like the world has just clicked into place and she can just hang up her hat and go home. Never mind tonight, tomorrow, the next day—it’ll come and she’ll be ready for it when it does, but right now, she’s living in the moment, and the moment is wonderful. 

She pulls back to get a better look at him, and his eyes are red-rimmed, but his smile is stretched across his face and he looks how she feels. He wraps his arms back around her for a hug, and she holds on tight, breathing him in, so grateful to have him back.

Finally, she’s ready to stand up and face the others. She and James help each other up, and she looks around at everyone else. She can tell how happy they all are for her, which is really nice, and even Emma, who’s managed to contain her smile into an amused little quirk of the lips—she’s too proud to show emotion, but the fact that she’s been in diamond form since leaving Natasha’s head hints at the fact that she’s been tearing up, too, and she doesn’t want anyone to see.

"Emma. Thank you for doing this for them," Hank says, putting a blue paw on her shoulder.

“It was nothing,” Emma says coolly, back to her usual self. “Just a bit of community service.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “If you say so.”

“Aw, they’re best friends now,” Clint says to nobody in particular. “Isn’t that sweet?”

Rhodey throws an arm around his shoulder and pretends to wipe away a tear with his other hand. “So touching.”

Natasha catches Emma's eye. “Idiots,” she says, fondly.

Emma nods.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With one day left until the attack, the team kicks it into gear.

“You ready for this?” Natasha asks Bobbi as they walk towards the meetup point. Her conversation with Taskmaster earlier in the evening had proven fruitful—he’d managed to get samples of the virus and a potential antidote, one that reduced the infectiousness in the other mice down to almost zero, even if the swelling in the brain didn’t go down in all of them. They’d arranged to meet at an abandoned warehouse in Newark at midnight, which meant that her private reunion with James was shorter than she would have liked...though not entirely unsatisfying.

They go inside the warehouse, into a big, empty, open space. All the lights in the building are off, but there’s a small amount of moonlight shining in through the windows, just enough to recognize faces when they’re close enough. He’s already there, waiting for them next to a tall window with a deep sill.

“Evening, ladies,” Taskmaster greets them. “Just the two of you tonight?”

“Hello, Taskmaster,” Bobbi replies as they walk over. “Got our stuff?”

“Right here,” he says. He pats a small plastic container on the windowsill next to him. As they walk up to him, he hands the container to Bobbi. “Don’t forget this when Christmas bonus time comes around.”

Bobbi takes the container and opens it up, and she and Natasha take a look. It holds two sealed tubes, set in place with silicone holders, labeled as “SAMPLE #174” and “INHIBITOR.”

“No one saw you take these?” Natasha asks. “Security cameras?”

“No one saw me, no one suspects me,” Taskmaster says. “And even if they did... you still got what you needed, didn’tcha?”

“This is very helpful,” Bobbi says, closing the case and slipping it into her backpack. “Thank you.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.” Taskmaster sticks out his hand, and Bobbi shakes it.

“Are we good to go?” Natasha asks her.

That’s when a silhouette appears in the doorway, and Phil Coulson’s voice says, “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.”

Natasha sees Bobbi freeze up out of the corner of her eye. Furious, she whirls on Taskmaster. “You _set us up_?”

He looks surprised, his eyes widening behind the mask. “What are you talking about?”

“I _told_ you _I_ was the contact on this case!” If Coulson knows what they’re up to, then Hill does, too, and they’re running short on time—this is exactly what they _didn’t_ want happening. The last thing they need is to be detained by S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, with less than two days to go before a biological attack on the most densely-populated metropolitan area in the country.

“I forgot!” Taskmaster says.

He’s not even lying, and she’s angry at herself for not having taken that possibility into account. A side effect of Taskmaster’s ability to mimic every move he sees is that there’s no room in his head for long-term memory. She should have written everything down for him. “Fuck!”

“If I may—” Coulson begins, stepping into the room.

“ _No!_ You may _not_!” Bobbi yells, springing into action and drawing a gun from her leg holster, pointing it at his chest. “Do not move, do not say a word! Open your mouth and I shoot, I swear I’ll do it.”

He freezes with his hands in the air.

“ _Stay that way_.” Bobbi’s face is dead white and sweaty, and she’s breathing loudly through her mouth, leading Natasha to suspect that she’s having a panic attack. Which might be a tricky situation, given the fact that she’s pointing a gun at someone.

Natasha tries to make her voice calm and soothing. “Bobbi, he can’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that,” Bobbi insists. “Maybe they have something new. You don’t _know_.”

Considering how secret Tony’s kept his invention, Natasha doesn’t think it’s likely, but she supposes it’s possible. And he could have some other sort of weapon to put them out of commission—why else would he have surprised them like this? Still, he looks terrified, and he’s not moving a muscle.

“Taskmaster,” Natasha says, calmly, “If you want to walk out of this alley in one piece, please explain the exact order of events that led to our being ambushed by S.H.I.E.L.D. in an alley.”

“I thought you _were_ S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Taskmaster says. “I thought we were _all_ S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Do you remember Mockingbird shooting you in the head?” Natasha asks. “That’s about the time we got out.”

He looks at Bobbi. “You shot me in the head?” He sounds almost hurt.

“She was brainwashed,” Natasha explains. “Now, what happened?”

“I did exactly what you asked,” Taskmaster says. “I checked the schedule, looked at the files, confirmed what you’d told me, and stole the samples. Then I called Coulson to check in, like I usually do. He didn’t act suspicious-like. He gave me the time and place, and said you were off-site, so I should call you with the details.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me you’d already spoken to him?”

“It didn’t come up!”

Natasha looks at Bobbi to see what she thinks, but Bobbi’s still shaking, still pointing her gun at Coulson, not taking her eyes off of him for a second.

“Fine,” Natasha says to Taskmaster. She waves him away. “Get out of here.”

Taskmaster’s eyes go back and forth between Bobbi and Coulson. “I don’t know if I should.”

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes. “Probably.”

“I’m not sure what to do here. Hey, Cheese, blink twice if you want me to rescue you.”

Coulson doesn’t, and Taskmaster sighs loudly. “Fine. If Hill gets mad... I offered.”

He leaves, and a few minutes later, they hear an engine, the sound growing faint as he drives away.

“We’d better tie him up,” Natasha says to Bobbi. “I’ll use my Widow’s Line. Coulson, we don’t want to hurt you unless we need to, but I would strongly advise that you not struggle.”

He nods, his eyes wide.

“Gag him, too,” Bobbi says.

She can't help feeling bad for him, but at the same time, she isn't known for her squeamishness, and she doesn't hesitate while immobilizing him with her line. While she’s at it, she also takes his weapons, a gun and two knives, and slides them across the floor to Bobbi. Once his hands are secure and tied to his body, she loosens the tie from his neck and turns it into a gag, ensuring that he can't use any trigger word to shut them down. The old one shouldn’t work—it’s never worked on her to begin with—but she made the mistake of being careless with Taskmaster, and she won’t do it again.

“Let’s get him to the car,” Natasha says, once she’s done.

“He’ll be able to identify it,” Bobbi points out.

Natasha sighs. “Do you have anything for a blindfold?”

“I’ve got a sweater in the car.”

Bobbi goes to fetch the sweater, and Natasha uses her comm to update Daisy on the situation, giving her the good news first, before adding, “We have a problem, though. Coulson showed up.”

“Oh, shit. What did he want?”

“We don’t know; we wouldn’t let him speak. Mockingbird thought it was too risky, in case they’ve upgraded their technology.” A diplomatic way of putting it. “We have him tied up and gagged, but we can’t exactly leave him here.”

“Do not bring him here,” Daisy says. “He probably has a tracker on him.”

“Copy that,” Natasha says. “How about Avengers Tower?”

“That could work. Tony wouldn’t approve of bringing in a hostage, though. I have to think about what to tell him. But what if S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up looking for him?”

“Look at it this way,” Natasha says. “Assuming he has a tracker, either he already told S.H.I.E.L.D. everything, in which case he doesn't have any new information to give them now, or he didn’t, which means that even if anyone thinks to look up his location, he’s at Avengers Tower, which is no cause for alarm. Anyway, in my opinion, even if S.H.I.E.LD. knows about the operation, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to interfere and risk screwing the whole thing up.” She moves away from Coulson so that he can’t hear her, and starts to speak in a lower voice. “Also, Daisy, you should know, Bobbi is freaking the fuck out.”

“How so?”

“She pulled a gun on him, threatened to kill him if he moved his lips. She’s...I don’t know, we have to keep her away from anyone still involved with the Secret Avengers. I honestly didn’t expect this.”

“Okay. Try to talk her down, go to Avengers Tower. I’ll talk to Tony and then call you back. Over and out.”

When Bobbi comes back with the sweater, Natasha places it over Coulson’s head, and they walk out to the car. They put him in the seat behind the passenger’s seat, and Bobbi sits next to him in the back while Natasha drives, heading towards the City.

About a quarter of an hour later, Daisy’s voice comes in through the comm. “Good news,” she says. “The Avengers are on their way to space, so the Tower is basically empty of prying eyes. Tony set a suite aside for us—I didn’t tell him about Coulson, just that we needed a place to work in Manhattan—so you go there now, and guard him. I’ll gather up all my shit, and in the morning, when the others come into the city for the stakeouts, I’ll go with them, meet you at the Tower, and run the operation from there, keeping an eye on Coulson.”

Natasha clicks her tongue. “That means we can’t leave until you get here, and James will be manning his station alone.”

“We’ll leave early, then.”

“All right. Keep us posted.”

They keep the sweater over Coulson’s eyes for the duration of the trip, until after they’ve parked in the underground parking lot and entered the elevator, the car out of their line of sight. The suite Tony’s reserved for them is the same one he gave her last time, so she’s familiar with the layout, and she walks Coulson over to the couch and seats him down on it. Bobbi has more rope from the car trunk, which she hands over so that Natasha can bind Coulson’s ankles together. It shouldn’t be too uncomfortable, and if he wants to lie down, he can. He’s bound loosely enough that he could probably escape if given enough time, but not with them watching him.

Once she’s done, she stands up again, looking Coulson in the eyes. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” she says. He looks at her reproachfully, and she turns to Bobbi and says, “You know, we should give him a pen and paper. Maybe he actually has something to communicate with us.”

Bobbi flattens her lips, then says, “Pens are sharp. What if he uses it as a weapon?”

“He’s not Bullseye, come on.”

“We can’t underestimate S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Bobbi, you and I have both been S.H.I.E.L.D. for years. Just because Maria Hill let you down doesn’t mean they’re rotten to the core.”

Bobbi doesn’t answer.

Natasha puts a hand on her hip. “It’s just a pen, Bobbi. Worse comes to worst, he takes one of our eyes.” This is tongue-in-cheek, and it gets half a smile out of Bobbi. “He still won’t be free.”

She sighs. “Okay, okay. I’ll go find something.”

Bobbi finds a pen and a pad of post-its in the kitchen and brings them over, placing them on the coffee table. She unholsters her gun and points it at Coulson. “Okay, you can adjust him.”

“Is that really necessary?” Natasha asks. She's not squeamish, but she doesn't like pointing guns at allies, especially when it's two on one, and the one isn't even a match for either of them on their own. “His feet will still be bound.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“Ask Coulson how safe he feels right now.”

“Ask Coulson how safe _I felt_ when—” Bobbi cuts herself off, shakes her head, and reholsters the gun. “Never mind. Just do it.”

Coulson doesn't struggle, but he looks at her balefully as she unties her Widow’s Line from his wrists. She massages his wrists for a minute to get the blood flowing and make sure there’s no damage, then ties his hands back up again. His left hand is snug against his body, but his right has enough slack for him to write. “There you go,” she says. “You okay? Any pain?”

He glares and uses his less-restrained hand to try to get at the gag, but she’s looped the cord around his leg so that he can’t bring his arm high enough to reach it. He narrows his eyes at her, and she responds with a shrug.

She turns to Bobbi. “We’ve got to get some sleep,” she says. “You go first. I’ll stay here and watch him.” She glances at Coulson. “You should sleep, too, unless you have something you want to tell us.”

He scowls around his gag, refusing to move.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” Bobbi says. “I’ll be up the whole time worrying that he might overtake you and get out of the restraints and come after me.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d be insulted.” Natasha quirks her lips. “Listen, you know I can handle the situation if anything happens. Go get some rest. Do that yoga that you told me about.”

Bobbi swallows and nods, and then she scowls and says, “You know, that’s not what the yoga is for.”

“Okay, Morse.” Natasha takes hold of her shoulders and turns her around, then pats her on the back. “Go.”

 

 

Rhodey’s in the driver’s seat—of the car, at least. As far as the mission goes, he’s starting to feel like it’s spun way out of control, and he can’t wrap his mind around what he’s hearing.

“I am very uncomfortable with this,” he says. “For the record.”

“It's not a pleasant situation—” Daisy starts.

“Let's not mince words here; it's kidnapping. And in the Avengers Tower, which makes Tony liable.” All Tony’s ever done is try and do nice things for his friends, which is something everyone takes for granted, and for them to take advantage of that in a way that harms him.... It’s not a good look.

“Does it, actually?” Bucky wonders out loud.

“I don't know, should we find out the hard way?” Rhodey snaps. He sighs and switches lanes, seeing their exit coming up. “I'm just saying, there are rules.”

“Okay,” Daisy says. “You’re right. Okay. I’ll figure something out. I’m not going to leave him bound and gagged for twenty-four hours unless I’m convinced he’s a threat.”

“Thank you.”

The car falls silent, and he turns the radio up to stay alert. They make their way to New York, the roads empty at this time of...night? Morning? It’s hard to say. The Lincoln Tunnel dumps them out in Midtown, and they drive up to Columbus Circle to let Daisy out at the Tower.

“Thanks for the ride,” she says. She holds up a pouch that she’s been keeping on her lap and tosses it to one of the guys in the backseat. “The extra earpieces I scored for you guys are in here, so don’t forget this. I’ll be in touch.”

Bucky gets dropped off next, right in front of the clinic he’s staking out, and they continue up towards Harlem. Clint’s been uncharacteristically quiet, and Rhodey can tell he’s worried. It's been a long time since their West Coast Avengers days, but Clint "Emotions on His Sleeve" Barton hasn't changed much, at least in that respect.

“You thinking about Bobbi?” Rhodey asks.

Clint glances over, the answer apparently so obvious it doesn’t need to be said.

“Think she’ll be okay?”

Clint rubs his eyebrows with two fingers and sighs. “God, I don’t know. I feel like...I should have seen this coming, you know? I should have made her talk about it some more, or something, I don’t know. I keep dropping the ball when it comes to her.”

“You know that you’re not a trained professional, right?” Rhodey says. “And it’s not your job to be one for her.”

“I know, but if I can’t help her deal with her demons, then what am I good for?”

“Isn’t this the same thing that happened last time? You tried to be everything for her, and then when you couldn’t, it tore the two of you apart? You can’t take everything on yourself. See, with Carol and me—”

“Oh, ‘with Carol and me,’” Clint snickers, elbowing him in the side. “‘With Carol and me.’ Talk to me when you two have actually spent more than a week together on the same planet.”

“Hey, if you don’t want my advice, don’t come running to me with sob stories again when she dumps your ass.”

“Okay, fine.” Clint opens his arms, as if to say, _bring it_. “Tell me about ‘with Carol and me.’”

“You can’t treat a partner like...like a pet on a leash,” he says. “Am I afraid sometimes, with her being so far away, that something’s going to happen to her? Or, I don’t know, dumb fears like that she’ll have new experiences that I can’t relate to, and she’ll leave me behind? All the time. But I’m not here to stunt her growth.”

“I’m not trying to stunt Bobbi’s growth.”

He tsks. “Wanting to solve all her problems for her _is_ stunting her growth.”

“So what do I do? What does a good partner do when the person they love has this kind of crippling trauma?”

Rhodey slants him a look. “Hell if I know. I’m not a trained professional, either.”

After a pause, Clint says, “She did say she wanted to start therapy.”

“Good! That’s good. Therapy’s really good.”

They find street parking a few blocks away from the clinic and take the equipment—rope, carabiners, pulleys, a handlebar, tarp, telescopic poles, food, water—from the trunk. It’s still dark out, so Rhodey feels comfortable putting on the armor and flying Clint and the supplies up to the roof. They put together a few shelters for shade and camouflage, a zip line to the roof across the street, and a basic rope that can be dropped to the ground to get up and down easily, for those of them without thrusters in their costume. When the work is done, Rhodey picks up two water bottles and tosses one to Clint.

“Salud,” he says, opening his bottle and holding it out.

Clint taps the bottle with his. “Cheers, buddy.”

 

 

When Daisy gets to the suite, she finds Natasha and Bobbi whispering to each other, sitting across a coffee table from an exhausted-looking Phil, who’s gagged with his own tie and is trying to sit up with as much dignity as he can muster. She looks at the coffee table, scattered with post-it notes, the phrase “ungag me” on each one, including the note that’s still on the pad, with the words underlined. There’s a pen on the floor, and she wonders if Phil dropped it there intentionally, in protest.

“Seems like everything’s going perfectly,” she says glibly.

Phil gives her a _look_. It either means, _I’m tired of this bullshit_ or _I really need a nap_ , or possibly both.

“I’ll be right with you,” she says to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. She turns to Bobbi and Natasha, and gestures with her thumb to the bathroom. The three of them gather there, keeping the door open so that they can keep an eye on Phil, and she switches to an undertone.

“Anything new?” she asks.

Natasha shakes her head. “He refuses to lie down, sleep, or write anything except for ‘ungag me.’ But Bobbi won’t have it.”

“Hey, we tried to meet him halfway,” Bobbi insists. “If he had anything important to say to us, he would write it.”

“Maybe he’ll be more open to talking once it’s just me,” Daisy says. “I’ve worked with him much more than the two of you have.”

“I hope so,” Natasha says. 

Daisy looks back at him, still sitting with his back straight, stubborn to the end. She doesn’t want to think that he came to apprehend or neutralize them, but S.H.I.E.L.D. really went off the rails when things went south with both her and Bobbi, and she can’t afford to be too trusting. Then again, she’d thought the same thing when Natasha and Clint had shown up at her door, and look at how that turned out.

“You know, you might be here all day, or longer. How are you going to feed him without ungagging him?” Bobbi asks. “Not to mention, what if he has to use the bathroom...”

Natasha raises her eyebrows. “Taking hostages not as glamourous as you expected, eh, Morse?”

Daisy puts her brain back into strategy mode. “How about this? After you two leave, I’ll take out the gag. You wait around for a few minutes, and I’ll check in with you so you know he hasn’t wiped my mind or attacked me or anything else. If I haven’t contacted you within ten minutes, assume something’s gone wrong. Take these.” She reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out the noise-canceling headphones she’d brought with her everywhere since being let go from the organization. “How’s that?”

They agree on the plan, and then Daisy sends Natasha back out to the living room so that she can speak with Bobbi privately.

“Listen, are you all right?” Daisy asks her. “Natasha told me you flew off the handle when you saw Coulson.”

Bobbi frowns. “Am I being reprimanded? Because I think I made the right call.”

“It’s not about making the right call. And no, you’re not being reprimanded. I’m just concerned.” When Bobbi doesn’t answer, she asks, “Morse, do you need to be benched? Again, not as a punishment. If you’re not up for this, that’s okay. From what she said, I wonder if seeing action is the best thing for you right now.”

“No, I...” Bobbi covers her hand with her mouth as she trails off, then pushes her hair out of her face and looks her straight in the eyes. “Natasha’s right, I freaked out, and I guess I’m not as over it as I thought I was, but I can handle a stakeout. I’ve calmed down over the past few hours, and having this job will be a good distraction.”

“I hope you’re telling the truth,” Daisy says. She groans. “Okay. You're cleared for duty, I guess. Let me know if anything changes.”

“I will.”

After Natasha and Bobbi head out, Daisy sits down next to Phil.

“I’m going to take the tie off your mouth now,” Daisy says to him. “Don’t...bite me, or anything.”

He rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t move as she undoes the knot and unwraps the tie.

“That was a very unpleasant experience,” Phil says emphatically.

“I know, I’m sorry. I really am. But we’re all paranoid here.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” He starts to cough, and she realizes his mouth must be dry from hours of being partially open and having fabric pressed into it. He’s probably parched by now.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” she asks.

“Please.”

He’s still in the same position when she gets back, and she double-checks that all the binds are in place before holding the glass against his lips. He opens his mouth and tilts his head back, and she pours the water slowly, stopping every so often so that he can swallow. She doesn’t think he would have accepted this from either of the others, but with her...well, they did have a good working relationship before all this.

When the glass is empty, she puts it down on the coffee table.

“Your agents are very effective,” Phil says, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.

“You took them by surprise,” Daisy responds. “And Mockingbird in particular has reasons to be wary of S.H.I.E.L.D. taking her by surprise.”

“I know that, but I didn’t know of any other way to get in touch with any of you.”

“Why did you need to get in touch with us at all? Why not just let us be?”

“It’s this whole viral attack story. Something doesn’t sit right with me, and I wanted to talk it over with you.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. “How much do you know, anyway?”

He starts to explain. “When Taskmaster called me, it took me a while to understand what he was talking about, but I played along and got as much information as I could out of him without tipping him off to the fact that this was the first time I was hearing anything about it. But, I don’t know, maybe the way he told it, it seems...off. How did he manage to get the samples if he’s not in the science department? So I figured if I met up with you, I could get the full story, and... I just thought you could use some extra brainpower. I’m not here on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s behalf.”

That makes her skeptical. “So, what, _you_ defected, too?”

“No, I, uh...called in sick.” He looks sheepish.

“Why didn’t you tell Maria the truth?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, then her lowers his head and admits, “I didn’t think Bobbi would take it very well if I did.”

Daisy laughs at the irony; she can’t help it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. Poor you!”

“Yeah, I’m sure I’ll laugh about it in a few years,” he says.

After that, she tells him everything they learned, from the disk that Bobbi recovered, to the research that Natasha and Rhodey dug up, along with their theories. “What do you think?” she asks.

“It _almost_ lines up,” he says. “But I don’t like it. Why are they bothering to experiment on people if the studies on mice aren’t conclusive? It’s very inefficient. Why are certain things spelled out explicitly—like the addresses and date of the attack—but the names of the operatives on the inside at the clinics aren’t? Still, though...the virus is real, we have proof of that.”

“Do you think it’s some sort of setup?” Daisy asks.

“It seems like an awful lot of work to go through, and what would they be trying to set up?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. There’s definitely something happening. I guess you should proceed with whatever plan you have, but cautiously, and pay attention if anything seems weird.” 

 

 

Bucky sees the motorcycle coming a few blocks away, and he can tell it’s Natasha, even with the helmet on. It’s something about the way she holds herself, as if she’s the one flying down the street and the bike is just along for the ride. As she pulls up near the clinic, he peeks his head out over the roof so that she can see him.

She notices him and nods. Then she turns in a circle to check out her surroundings. He can see her cataloguing the area, figuring out what to use in what order to get up to the roof. She turns towards a fire escape, running up to it and jumping to catch the bottom of the ladder, then she swings her legs up and twists. This sends her body flying over in his direction, temporarily touching her feet to—and then springing off of—a window ledge, catching herself on the edge of the roof, swinging herself over the side, and landing on her feet right next to him.

“Hey,” she says huskily, leaning in for a kiss. His mouth catches hers, warm and soft and perfect, and they indulge for a few seconds, after which she pulls back, ready for business. “What have we got?”

He points out the front and back entrances to the clinic. “All quiet, so far. They open at eight, so I expect staff to start showing up at seven. We probably won’t see any action before that.”

“And if we do, it’s probably fishy,” she adds.

“Exactly. So, how’s our hostage situation?” Bucky asks.

She shakes her head. “What a mess. You’d think he’d be smarter than to walk in there the way he did. I’m a little annoyed with him for being so easy to subdue, actually. Would have been less of a headache if he’d escaped.”

“He probably wasn’t expecting the reception he got.”

“Coulson?” She raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t he supposed to be a walking superhero encyclopedia? Everyone knows Mockingbird has anger issues.”

“Actually, they don’t.”

“It’s her _thing_.”

“Maybe, but there’s not much about her out there. You know her personally, but most of what you’re thinking of isn’t known to the public. How she spent her time in captivity with the Skrulls, the thing with the Phantom Rider... the media doesn’t know any of that.”

He can see her mulling that one over.

“Must be nice,” she says, finally.

“Not to have reporters in your business all the time? I’d imagine it is.”

“Not that it matters. You ready to stake?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Where’s our pee bucket?” Natasha asks.

He points.

“Excellent. Let’s do this.”

They’re keeping their eyes out for anyone carrying a cooler into the building. As it turns out, there are plenty of people going into the building, and they get a little excited when they see people walking down the sidewalk with coolers, but unfortunately, there’s no overlap between the cooler-holding people and the going-into-the-building people.

They’re crouched out near each other, so that they can make conversation without using the comm link, but most of the morning, their talk is limited to pointing out people holding coolers and other job-related topics. There’s something that’s been eating at him, though, and with the hours of silence, the thought gets into his head and takes over. He doesn’t want to spoil the streak of happiness they’ve got going, but he can’t banish the thought, and eventually, he decides he needs to get it off his chest. “Hey, question.”

She looks over. “Yes?”

He forces the words out. “Are you mad at me?”

“Not as far as I know,” she says, drawing her eyebrows together in confusion. “Should I be?”

“Well, it’s just...back when this whole thing happened, when we recovered you and everything.... When I told S.H.I.E.L.D. to stop with the treatments, Steve told me that I needed to ‘fight for you.’ Said if I really loved you, I would never give up. Made me think that if you ever found out the truth, you wouldn’t forgive me.”

She snorts and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, my darling boy. Steve’s a lovely person—a paragon, even—but if I wanted him, I would have gone for him.”

“I _do_ love you,” he says. “I thought walking away was the best choice for you.”

“James. Honestly. It’s not your fault I went and got myself captured.”

“Nat...”

“Okay, okay, it’s not my fault, either. What happened, happened. It’s over now. I’m certainly not going looking for reasons to dump you. Do _you_ want out?”

“Of course not.”

She goes back to her lookout position. “Good, that makes two of us. And I love you, too. So let’s be happy until the next calamity.”

 

 

The day goes on, with patients going in and out of the clinic all day, but no delivery people. The chatting on the comm comes and goes in bursts, as they try to find a good balance between entertaining and annoying. It starts with Clint and Rhodey treating everyone to a duet of “Light My Candle,” from Rent, followed up by a singalong of “The Lazy Song” led by Bucky, who does the verses (as the only one of them who knows the words), with the rest of them joining in on the chorus. As far as stakeouts go, this is one of the more entertaining ones Clint has participated in.

When Bobbi had shown up earlier, he had taken Rhodey’s advice, holding himself back from hovering and fussing. Instead, he’d joked, “Heard you single-handedly took down S.H.I.E.L.D.”

She’d let out a half-hearted laugh. “Hero of the people, that’s me.”

“When they lock you up, I’ll make T-shirts. ‘Mockingbird was right.’”

“Talk to my lawyer,” she’d said. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Hey, c’mere,” he’d said softly, and she’d thrown herself into his arms, holding on for dear life.

She’d relaxed her grip after a bit, taking a step back but keeping her hands on his arms. “I’ll be okay,” she'd assured him. “Let’s just get through this job, and then we’ll start fixing ourselves.”

That was all that was said about that. Afterwards, she’d taken some of the provisions and moved to the roof across the street, setting up her own surveillance station, and all their communication since then has been over the public channel.

By the time the last employees are leaving and locking up, no delivery truck has shown up at either clinic. Rhodey’s manning the back entrance, Clint is on the front, and Bobbi’s still across the street with her binoculars, checking out the security system as the last person leaves. Natasha updated them a few minutes ago that their place was closed up for the day, but this place was running late with a few patients and had to stay open after the official hours.

As the evening goes on, there’s nothing to do—the doors are locked and the clinic is empty, but the city is still awake, and it will be for hours, so it’s still too early to break in and start looking around. At this point, if someone does go into the clinic, it’s very likely that it’ll have something to do with the delivery, but with all of the foot traffic below, none of it is headed towards their target.

“Nothing is happening,” comes Bobbi’s voice, in a warbly kind of tune that sounds like it’s a quote from something he should recognize, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

“What is that?” Clint asks. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“It’s Scuttle,” she says. “‘Only one day left, and...’ however the rest of the line goes.”

“Oh, right.”

“Who’s Scuttle?” Daisy asks.

“The seagull from The Little Mermaid?” says Clint.

“Never seen it.”

“You’ve never seen The Little Mermaid?” That’s Rhodey.

“It’s from like a thousand years ago,” Daisy says.

“Way to make me feel old,” says Bobbi.

“Yeah, Phil is giving me a very disapproving look right now.”

“So am I,” says Bobbi. “Tell him I say he’s all right after all.”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna do that.” Then, after a few seconds of radio silence, “Fine, I told him.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said, now he has _two_ things to add to the Mockingbird file of his superhero binder.”

 

 

 

They sleep in shifts. Bobbi’s super-soldier serum means that she needs less sleep than the rest of them, but she only got an hour or two the night before, so tonight is split evenly, with her sleeping for the first shift, Rhodey second shift, and Clint last. There’s a pile of sheets set up on the main roof, and she’s practically running on empty, so it doesn’t take her long to fall asleep, but it’s not a very restful sleep, and her body wakes her up just a few minutes before her watch alarm goes off.

She yawns and reaches around for her glasses and earpiece. It takes a few seconds, but her hands eventually find them. She puts the earpiece in and the glasses on and takes a cursory look around—seems like the streets are empty, which means it may be time for her to break in.

“Mock, you up?” Clint’s voice says through the comm seconds before her watch starts to beep.

She presses the button on her watch to silence the alarm. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” She rolls onto her side and pushes herself up, walking over to his side of the roof. His face breaks into a smile when he sees her, and she leans into him, yawning again. He kisses her (probably greasy, probably matted) hair and puts an arm around her.

“How long has it been clear here?” she asks.

He checks his watch. “Over half an hour. I’d say you’re safe to go in as soon as you can stand on your own two feet.”

“I _can_ stand on my own two feet, you jerk.” She smiles despite herself as she pushes off of him. There’s a box nearby with canned espresso, and she helps herself to one, downing it in two shots before pressing the button on her earpiece and announcing that she’s ready to go in.

Bucky’s voice comes through. “I’ve still got some pedestrians on my end. I’m going to wait.”

Bobbi finds the rope that Clint had showed her earlier in the day, and she uses it to abseil down the side of the building. Luckily, the coast remains clear, and it doesn’t take her long to pick the lock, at which point the panel of the security system just inside the door starts to flash red. She checks her palm, where she’d copied down the security code earlier, and punches in the numbers. Once the light turns green, she begins her search, starting out with a room that appears to be a lab/pharmacy. The refrigerator has a few different vaccines, but no flu shots. Next, she goes through the closets, cabinets, and desks, examining the labels on all of the boxes. She checks the reception desk after that, then the desks in all of the examination rooms. Finally, having gone over every corner, she’s convinced that the shots haven’t arrived.

“Mockingbird here,” she reports. “I’m done, nothing here.”

She covers her tracks as she leaves, turning the alarm back on and getting the lock back in place, then climbs back up to the roof and takes over Rhodey’s position so that he can take his turn sleeping. Bucky reports not having found anything, either, and the rest of the night is quiet. At some point, Clint and Rhodey switch, and Rhodey takes over as lookout for the front entrance. Clint wakes up at six, and he sits with her, and they eat cereal bars and drink more cold coffee and watch the city come to life. When they finish, he takes over her position, and Bobbi climbs down the back of the building. She walks around the block and buys a newspaper at the bodega across the street from the clinic, then sits down to read it at the nearest bus stop, which gives her a perfect view into the clinic’s glass paneling.

At seven, employees start to trickle in. One person drags a sign out to the sidewalk, orange and black block letters telling people to come in for their free flu shot and donut, and a few minutes later, someone goes in with boxes of donuts, which they start to set up on a table in the waiting room.

At 7:51, it’s almost time for the clinic to open its doors, when Rhodey speaks. “Hey, I see a van. It’s got a Tau Pharma logo.” There’s a pause, and then he continues, “Yeah, it’s parking, half a block away...and a guy’s getting out, holding a cooler.”

Bobbi stands up, ready to take action. Across the street, she can see Rhodey and Clint doing the same. She pats down the parts of her costume where she keeps her weapons, making sure everything is in place, and puts a hand on the zip line, waiting for the command.

Daisy’s voice comes in through the comm: “All right, everyone. Show time.”


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s time to save the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point last week, I thought that this was going to be the last chapter of this fic, but there are still more ends that need to be wrapped up, so we've got another chapter ahead of us after this one. As always, thank you so much to all of my readers, commenters, and kudosers.

Bobbi folds up her newspaper and puts it down on the bench. She removes her trenchcoat, placing that on the bench as well, making her recognizable in her costume.

“Mockingbird?” says Daisy’s voice in her ear. “You ready?”

“Ready and going in,” Bobbi says.

Coulson’s voice comes through next. “Hawkeye, Iron Patriot, you’re on deck.” Overnight, Daisy had set up the main radio at their station so that they could both stay in contact with the team. Bobbi wonders if his hands have been untied yet. It’ll probably be awkward next time she sees him.

She’s trying not to think about that.

Their target to be intercepted, the delivery guy with the cooler, comes into view. He’s easy to spot: big guy, wearing a bright blue collared uniform shirt and cap, heading directly for the clinic. She crosses the street and places herself in his way, forcing him to stop.

“Hi, my name is Mockingbird. I’m with the Avengers.” She almost sticks out her hand, then realizes he's holding the cooler with two hands and won’t be able to shake hers. “I’m sorry to get in your way, but we’ve received a tip that these flu shots have been tampered with and replaced by a dangerous virus, so for public health reasons, I’ll need to confiscate the contents of this cooler.”

The guy stares at her flatly. She wonders if she was unclear, somehow, and opens her mouth to restate the issue, and then he says, “Well, this is new.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Fucking anti-vaxxers. Impersonating an Avenger? That’s low, even for you people.”

“I’m not an anti-vaxxer, and I _am_ an Avenger!”

“Oh? Where’s your...what do you call it, your Avengers ID card?”

Damn it, he’s got her there. “Well, technically, I’m not currently on any teams...”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

He starts walking again, pushing past her, and she’s about given up hope that this will be solved without resorting to violence, when Clint walks over, fully Hawkeyed-up, and presents his Avengers ID. “Is there a problem?” he asks.

The guy looks from Clint to his card, then back again, and Bobbi realizes with a sinking heart that Clint wasn’t issued a new card after his latest costume change. He hands the card back to Clint. “Yo, this ain’t you.”

Bobbi almost growls in frustration. She knows Clint was trying for a more serious, less-cartoony kind of image with the new costume, but the purple sunglasses and black T-shirt don’t exactly scream “Hawkeye the Avenger” to the average person on the street, and now it’s coming back to bite them in the ass. Since when do people not believe someone when they say they’re an Avenger?

“What do you mean it’s not me?” Clint says, pointing to the quiver of arrows and the bow on his back. “Of course it’s me! I’m Hawkeye! That’s my signature right here on the card.”

“Listen, whoever you people are, the only public health concern here is the fact that the flu can be very serious, especially in the elderly, infirm, and pregnant, and it’s extremely contagious. The best way to combat outbreaks is—”

“I know all this, and I’m extremely pro-vaccination,” Bobbi says, exasperated. “I’m a biologist, for Heaven’s sake!”

He gives her a second look. “Wait. Mockingbird, you said?”

“Yes!”

“My daughter,” he says. “She’s thirteen, crazy smart. She’s a huge fan. Are you really Mockingbird?”

“Yes, and I’d love to meet your daughter,” Bobbi says, “but right now, we need to get rid of this virus.” Still, she doesn't get that a lot, and it's a nice feeling.

“So what you're saying is that someone snuck into the lab where these were being kept and replaced these flu shots with some sort of deadly virus? A biological attack?”

“That’s what we believe, yes,” Clint says.

His eyes widen. “But if this is true—this is our sixth stop of the morning! We need to go back and collect all of the other coolers we dropped off!”

“No, it’s just this clinic—and another in the Upper West Side, but we have a team on site there, too,” says Bobbi, but she’s starting to feel less confident.

The guy shakes his head. “What? No, that’s impossible. All of the shipments were packed in the same lab, and they haven’t been out of my sight since they were put together. If one of them is contaminated, they’re all contaminated.”

Remembering Coulson’s message to look out for anything suspicious, Bobbi relays this to Daisy and the rest of the team.

“Is it possible that this guy’s in on it?” Rhodey asks.

“Doesn’t seem like it, but you should probably come on down and decide for yourself,” Bobbi says. Maybe she's biased by the fact that his daughter looks up to her, maybe he just said that to get her guard down, but she hopes not.

She sees his shadow on the sidewalk after a few seconds, and she looks up in time to see him land right behind her. At the same time, the clinic door opens, and a woman in white scrubs walks out. Even before she sees the name tag, Bobbi recognizes her—Julia Pacek, one of the nurses whose biographies they’d studied. Unmarried, has a twin brother and a younger sister, grew up in Maryland and moved to New York for college, then stayed after she graduated. No known ties to A.I.M. or any other terrorist organization, but then, none of the other names they'd looked at had any suspicious ties, either.

“What’s going on here?” she demands as she walks up. “We’re about to open up, and you’re making a commotion on my sidewalk. Carl, are those my flu shots?”

“Yes,” he says.

“No,” Bobbi, Clint, and Rhodey say at the same time.

She squints at them. “What is this? Why do we have supers out here?”

“They’re saying that the flu shots were swapped out with a virus,” the delivery guy—Carl—explains.

“How do you know this?” Julia asks, looking at Bobbi.

“We found out that A.I.M. has planned an attack—”

“A.I.M.? I thought they were legitimate now.” Which is something that an undercover A.I.M. agent might say—or might _not_ say, to throw off suspicion.

Carl clicks his tongue. “Nah, that’s what they want you to think. Same old people, new branding.”

Julia sighs, like she’s got a busy day ahead of her and she doesn’t want to start out with a ten-minute delay. “Well, can we take this inside? People are starting to stare.”

“Status?” Daisy says, as they follow Julia and Carl inside.

“It’s not entirely clear,” says Rhodey. He's got some setting on his suit so that his voice is blocked from the people around him and only comes in through the comm link. “I think Mock is right—I don't think either of the people we're talking to are in on it.”

“Ask them if you can take the flu shots up here to the lab for testing,” Coulson suggests.

They go into the reception room of the clinic, which has chairs lined all around the wall and a column in the middle of the room with a whiteboard that reads, “GET YOUR FLU SHOT! Keep the flu away from you and the people you come into contact with this season. Enjoy your complimentary donut!” Next to the column is a table with bakery boxes—on the left, a stack of orange and pink Dunkin’ Donuts boxes, and on the right, plain white bakery boxes that a less universally-recognized place would use.

Carl places the cooler onto the reception desk, and the woman behind the desk stands up and reaches for it.

“Wait, don’t,” Carl says. “These Avengers say there’s a problem with the shots.”

“Can we take the cooler in for testing? Avengers Tower has very advanced lab facilities, we should be able to get results faster than anyone else,” Bobbi says.

“Do you actually have any evidence for what you’re claiming?” Julia demands. “The vaccine isn’t cheap, and—”

“We’ll return this to you if it turns out to be safe,” Bobbi says. “And if it’s not, or if we cause any damage which means it can’t be used, the Maria Stark Foundation will compensate you.”

“And then? Do you know how much money was spent on advertising for this event? Not to mention the patients. People are calling in late to their places of employment, taking off the morning for this. We can’t ask them to do it again in a few days.”

“We could redirect them to another clinic, if it’s just these—”

“I’m telling you,” Carl says, “it can’t be just these. They don’t ship different shots for different clinics.”

In the middle of all the arguing, the door opens, and a new player comes in—a petite woman wearing a lab coat over black pants and a green sweater. “Hi, everyone!” she says, seeming not to notice the chaos. “Hi, Carl.”

“Hey, Dr. Henderson,” he says.

“Avengers!” she says, noticing them with delight. “Are you here for your flu shots? That’s amazing publicity. Can we take a selfie with you and post it on our Facebook page?” Without waiting for an answer, she walks over to the donuts table. “Ooh, what kind of donuts do we have?”

“Plain, glazed, custard, chocolate,” the woman at reception recites. “Don’t take that! It’s for the vaccinatees.”

“Not fair, I got my flu shot last week. Come on, just one.”

“Fine, but don’t tell anyone.”

“Chocolate and custard are in the Dunkin’ box, and the glazed and plain are from this new place Dan’s cousin works at.”

Dr. Henderson reaches for the plain white box, taking out a glazed donut.

“Not my cousin,” says a man in blue scrubs, presumably Dan. “Maybe Dan R.”

“Guess so. She called me up and said Dan, that’s all I know.”

Bobbi frowns. Something is off. The flu shots were all packaged together but the donuts were brought in separately, and _glazed and plain_ sets off warning bells in her head—

Rhodey makes eye contact with her. “It’s not the shots,” he says.

She nods. “It’s the donuts.”

The next thing she knows, there’s an arrow flying through the air, knocking the donut out of Dr. Henderson’s hand, and three people scream.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Julia yells at Clint. “You could have killed her!”

Clint scowls; he doesn’t take very well to being yelled at. “It was a rubber tip,” he says defensively. “And I don’t miss.”

“Did you just say the virus is in the _donuts_?” Carl asks.

Meanwhile, Dr. Henderson is looking back and forth between the fallen donut and Clint, completely befuddled, like she’s trying to put together a puzzle without having any of the pieces.

“Is that possible?” Clint asks. “To transmit viruses by food?”

“Depends on the virus, but in many cases, yes,” Bobbi says. “Think rotavirus.”

“How do we get rid of them and make sure no one gets...exposed?” Rhodey asks.

“We have procedures for that here,” Julia says. “But are you sure about this? Two seconds ago it was the flu shots, now the donuts—does this mean the flu shots are safe? How do you know it’s not something else altogether?”

“I’m...just going to go wash my hands,” Dr. Henderson says.

Bobbi notices that a crowd is gathering outside the window. A few people are taking pictures and videos on their phones, which doesn’t seem good for publicity, considering how uncertain the situation is right now. Usually when the Avengers handle a threat, there’s an obvious villain standing in front of them, and when S.H.I.E.L.D. handles a threat, there are no witnesses, so this situation is new for all of them. If they hadn’t been so sure this was an inside job, they might have been able to handle it more privately ahead of time, and it’s looking more and more like it’s not.

Rhodey walks over to the reception desk and pushes up his faceplate so that his face is visible. “Hi, we weren’t introduced,” he says to the receptionist. “I’m Iron Patriot, formerly known as War Machine, sometimes known as Iron Man.”

“Karen Stein,” she responds. “That’s, uh, the name I was born with. Well, technically, they named me in synagogue the next—what can I do for you?”

“You said that someone called you up about the donuts? The second bakery? What did they say, exactly?”

“She said that she was Dan’s cousin—we have two Dans here, I didn’t ask which—and he told her about the event, and she wanted to volunteer—to donate some boxes of donuts from her new bakery.”

“Your staff is listed on your website,” Rhodey says. It’s not a question.

“That’s right. I didn’t suspect...” 

“No, of course. You wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect. It’s not your fault.”

“Muffins and More,” Karen says. “That’s the name of the shop. I guess it’s not a real place. I’ll look it up.” She starts to type, then waits for the page to load. A few seconds later, the computer stops whirring, and she checks the screen, then lets her head drop. “There’s one in Latvia.” She shakes her head. “I’m an idiot.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Rhodey repeats. “Why would you think someone wanted to send poison donuts to your office? You’re fine. And we caught it in time, so no harm done.”

Bobbi lets her focus wander, to the people gawking through the window. Most of them look amused or excited, but one of them is staring at her, scowling. She takes a step towards the door.

Clint puts a hand on her shoulder. “You need backup?” he asks.

“I think I’ll be okay,” she says.

She strides outside with purpose, and all of the bystanders simultaneously decide that this would be a great time to get the hell out of Dodge. The man waiting for her stays put, composed and ready.

“What do you know?” she demands.

“You shouldn’t have humiliated Forson,” he says in response.

He doesn’t _look_ armed, but then he brings his hand up and he’s holding some sort of baton. He tries to hit her with it, but the baton is _her_ weapon and she catches it easily. Before she can process his satisfied grin, he presses a button and she feels the electric shock going through her, the force enough to knock out anyone who didn’t have super-soldier serum in their veins. Bobbi’s merely knocked on her ass, reeling from the hit as she hears his footsteps walking away.

She’s groggy as she tries to get up so that she can chase him down, and it takes at least ten seconds before she can pull herself to her feet and run in the direction she heard him go. By the time she reaches the nearest intersection, there’s no trace of him.

 

 

It’s all much smoother for Natasha and James, already having the full story. They speak to the head of their clinic, and it’s easy to convince them to store the vaccines for another day and treat the donuts as biomedical waste. No one at the clinic remembers much about the delivery person who dropped off the white-boxed donuts, but hopefully they’ll be able to bring the fight to A.I.M. at another point.

“We’ll call you as soon as we know,” Natasha says, taking a business card out of a plastic card holder on the desk.

“Thank you,” he says. “We’ll wait for your call.” They all move back into the reception area, where employees are disposing of the mystery donuts and taking down the event signs. “Hey, is that guy with you?”

Natasha looks out the window and sees Rhodey hovering outside in his suit. “Yeah, he’s our ride back. We’ll be in touch.”

They shake hands, and then Natasha and James leave, and Rhodey carries them up to the roof, where a quinjet is parked. The five of them clean up the mess from the stakeout and then pack up and get into the quinjet, which takes them to the Tower.

There’s some sort of commotion when they arrive, but it’s not for them, and Natasha realizes that they’ve arrived just as the main Avengers team is returning from their mission to space. Cannonball is limping and Iron Man is trying to convince him to go lie down so someone can check him out, and Spider-Woman and Spider-Man are arguing about who took out more goons, and then Spider-Woman catches sight of her and says, “ _Natasha_?”

The room goes silent, and then they’re swarmed by superheroes. Jess gives her a huge hug, and whispers, “Maria Hill is _so_ pissed at you.”

“Where did you guys come from? Where have you been? No one’s seen you in weeks!” Spider-Man exclaims, and then he tilts his head to the side, examines his arm, and quips, “Oh, wow, that was surreal. I just managed to do a perfect impression of all of my ex-girlfriends.”

“I need to get these to the lab,” Bobbi says, holding up the cooler, and Bruce whisks her away. They're left with a huge group of Avengers, talking over each other, asking her and Clint where they've been all this time, telling them about some incredible trip to Saturn that they missed, lots of ribbing and jostling and noogies all around.

She sees Rhodey and James standing off to the side, exchanging a knowing look at being left out of the melee, until Tony puts his arms around both of them and shoves them into a big group hug, at which point James’s eyes go wide in panic. Natasha laughs.

“Seriously, where _have_ you been?” Falcon asks from next to her. 

“Jersey,” she says, turning to face him. It’s not a lie, exactly. “Sure, you're all excited about the Milky Way, but you haven't lived until you've driven down a freeway and passed ten malls in two minutes.”

“Fine, don't tell me.” He laughs, and then Manifold bumps into her. 

“Long time no see,” Eden says. “How’s everyone’s head?”

Sam groans. “Oh, come on. He knows and I don't?”

“I actually have no idea where they've been hiding or what they’ve been up to. Daisy refused to say. ‘Eden, can you do me a favor?’ That's all. ‘Can you do me a favor?’ Unbelievable, these guys, I'm telling you.”

“Yeah, and you're welcome for holding down the fort,” Clint says pointedly.

The elevator dings, and Daisy and Coulson come out and join the rest of the group. Coulson hangs back, but Daisy walks into the thick of the crowd.

“Good job,” she says, shaking hands with the four of them. She looks around. “Where’s Mockingbird?”

“She’s down at the lab, running tests on the samples,” Natasha says. “Floor 89.”

“I’ve got to bring her my laptop,” Daisy says. “Maybe with this new perspective, we’ll be able to get a better read on what happened. Keep an eye on Phil, make sure he has someone to talk to.” But Cap’s already standing with him, making conversation. Sam and Jess start telling her about their mission. It’s hard to follow along—cosmic adventures are always the most complicated ones, and it seems like there were a lot of players that she’s not familiar with in this one. Apparently, a lot can happen in two weeks.

While she listens, she watches James out of the corner of her eye, talking to Steve and Coulson. She can tell the exact moment when he tells them about her memories having returned, because Steve covers his mouth with both hands and sneaks a glance at her. Finding her watching them, he puts on a straight face and nods, but she can see in his eyes how relieved he is for the two of them.

About twenty minutes later, Daisy and Bobbi walk back into the room, and Bobbi motions for Tony to join them. They discuss something quietly, and then Daisy raises her voice and announces, “Okay, everyone who's with me, follow us for debriefing.”

Tony adds, “Everyone else, try to keep it down.”

Their group, including Coulson and Tony, file into a boardroom at the end of the hall and sit down around the big wooden table. James is sitting across from her, which is good for making eyes at each other, but she realizes that although she’s been back to “herself” for days now, she’s also been in mission mode for the entire time. With the imminent threat behind them, her body wants to unwind, which means that the last place she wants to be is in a room full of people who aren’t the two of them. He probably knows this—she’s always keyed up right after a successful mission—and the private looks he’s giving her across the table aren’t helping. 

Daisy, at the head, starts to speak, and Natasha focuses her attention on that. “Before we start, I just want to remind everyone that if we hadn't been there today, people would have died. And we stopped that.”

She's great, she really is. Not that Natasha is one who lives for the approval of her superiors—not anymore—but still. Fury or Hill would never say anything like that. But Daisy’s young, she’s not burned out yet. Still, if she can manage to hang on to that trait, maybe one day she'll save S.H.I.E.L.D. from it’s been turned it into. 

“Given everything that happened this morning, Bobbi and I went back over the data we found on the disk we got from A.I.M., and we have a new understanding of what exactly happened.” Daisy nods at Bobbi, giving her the floor. 

Bobbi's voice is smooth and polished, like she'd spent time in the elevator rehearsing her lines. “We were working under the impression that they wanted this to be a secret, that we couldn’t do anything until the last minute in fear of tipping our hand. If they found out that we knew about this so-called experiment, they’d just change the location to somewhere else, and we’d never stop it. But the experiment was a failure to begin with. The virus was never going to do what they wanted it to do. So they decided they might as well take the opportunity to make us—me and Daisy specifically, based on what the guy who spoke to me said—look bad, and if a whole lot of innocent civilians died on our watch, even better.”

“So the leak,” James says, taking his eyes off Natasha and looking at Bobbi, “whoever passed the tip to Fury...”

Rhodey finishes the thought. “We fell right into their trap, is what we’re saying?”

“Almost,” Bobbi clarifies. “They didn’t think we would catch the donuts.”

“So they were expecting to kill all those people...”

“Probably.” Bobbi sighs. “It’s possible that at some point, they would have stepped in with the inhibitor to play ‘savior of the people.’ We don’t know. But it looks like their main goal was to have us publicly fail.”

“Which we didn’t,” Rhodey says.

“We stopped the outbreak, but we also prevented a lot of people from getting their seasonal vaccines based on an assumption which turned out to be—probably—wrong. In the scheme of things, we won, but it’s not a clean a win as the Avengers are used to.”

This isn’t going to be one of those conversations where Natasha has a lot to contribute, she realizes. She knows a lot about being made to look bad in the public eye, and she usually lets it roll off of her. As far as she’s concerned, today was a win. Having decided that, she allows her mind to half-wander and her her eyes to roam over James’s face and body. His hands. His gloves. They're probably dirty. Really filthy. They'd leave streaks of grime on her skin, probably. Oh, well, her immune system is pretty impenetrable. And she needs to shower sooner or later. 

“Well, they could reschedule, right?” Tony says, jolting her out of her fantasy.

Coulson taps a pen on the table. “Except that it was on a work day, and not everyone can afford to take off two mornings in the same month.”

“How about an initiative to sponsor flu shot clinics in workplaces?” Tony asks.

“That’s good thinking,” Coulson says, “but the thing is, most of these people who can’t take mornings off are working in service-oriented jobs, which aren’t always set up for something like that. Imagine if you work behind the counter at a fast food place. Where are you going to have this pop-up clinic, in the kitchen?”

There’s quiet in the room as that thought is digested, and then Daisy says, “Twitter campaign.”

Tony frowns. “What’s that, now?”

“Ask people to use a certain hashtag to write what their biggest obstacle is in getting their flu shots, and what the solution would be.”

Coulson nods. “I like it.”

“Bobbi, do you have an estimate of when you'll have results for those tests you ran on all of those samples?” Tony asks.

Bobbi opens her mouth, but she’s interrupted by a snore. Everyone looks to the source, and they see Clint slumped over in his seat, eyes shut. The silence must startle him, because he shakes himself awake and looks up to see all eyes on him.

“Sorry!” he says. “No, yeah, I totally agree.”

As embarrassing as it must be for him to fall asleep in the middle of a debriefing session, Natasha’s grateful to him for giving them all an excuse to get out of there that much sooner.

“We're all running on like five hours of sleep total in the past three days,” Daisy says to Tony in apology.

“I should have realized,” Tony says. “I'm so sorry. Let's get you guys some beds.”

Finally. She manages to hold herself back from jumping out of her chair as everyone gets up, and they split up into two groups, since she and Clint, being on the Avengers roster, already have their own rooms in the Avengers living quarters. Rhodey, Daisy, and Coulson go downstairs to make themselves comfortable in the borrowed suite, and Natasha relaxes her gait as she leads James to her room, trying to avoid making it too obvious what her intentions are.

Once they get inside the room, the game is off. She locks the door behind them and leans against the door. “You tired?” she asks. 

He crosses his arms and smirks in response. 

“Good,” she says, and puts a hand against his chest. “Leave the gloves on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Work 3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070829) in this series, a.k.a. Bucky and Natasha's smutty one-shot, takes place in between this chapter and the next.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After stopping the attack on the city, it's time to deal with the fallout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe it’s done! My first completed chapterfic. Thank you so much to all my readers for sticking with this story, to the commenters for your insight, everyone who left kudos for the encouragement, and especially to [mswhich](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mswhich) for beta-ing.

Bobbi wakes up to the sound of knocking.

Not polite, civilized knocking, no. Someone is _knockknockknockknock_ ing angrily on the door like it burned down their mother’s house, and the sound bounces around and reverberates in her skull and it won’t go away and— _knockknockknockknock_ —oh God, why won’t they stop?

She rolls over and tugs at Clint’s arm, waking him up.

His eyes pop open. “Mmmm?”

 **Someone knocking** , she signs, as the _knockknockknockknock_ sound continues.

He looks at the door, which visibly shakes with each rap, and sighs. He reaches his arm out to the side table, picking up his hearing aids, and she burrows into the blanket and pulls it over her head, trying to drown the sound out.

“Come in,” says Clint’s muffled voice from next to her. She can feel the bed move as he sits up, and she hears the door open, and—

(And then the Young Avengers attacked.)

“Clint, what the _fuck_?”

It's Kate's voice, and it's joined by excited barking as Clint's dog runs up and jumps onto the bed. There’s a lot of movement and noise, and Bobbi gives up on sleeping through it.

“You disappear with just a text message asking me to take care of the dog? And then you leave your phone on your counter? Without telling me where you're going or how long you'll be gone or if you're coming back?”

“I was—good _boy_ , yes you _are_ —I was on the _run_ , Kate, even _I_ didn't know where—”

“And now, you—oh, hello,” Kate says, as Bobbi starts to poke her head out of the blanket, and Lucky sticks his nose into her face and sniffs at her. “Clint, what on—is that _Morse_?”

Bobbi rolls the blanket down the rest of the way and props herself up on one elbow, pulling up the neck of her borrowed t-shirt to make sure she’s not accidentally exposing anything. She starts scratching the dog behind his ears, and he settles down in between her and Clint. “Hey, Kate. Since when do you call me Morse?”

“Since it makes me sound cool. Clint, is this my new mother?” Kate asks, and Bobbi lets out a snort of laughter. She and Kate don't know each other very well—yet?—but Bobbi appreciates her sass.

“Depends,” Bobbi says. “Do you do your own laundry?”

“Regrettably, yes, but only recently.” Kate sighs. “I grew up extremely rich. For the record, I was rooting for you all along.”

“Rooting for what?” Clint asks. He pulls up his legs up and crosses them, pulling up the sheet to cover the parts of his legs that his shorts don’t hide, and yawns into his arm.

“Well, I knew you'd come to _your_ senses eventually,” she says, and turns back to Bobbi. “I mean, obviously you're too good for him—”

“Don’t talk about him that way,” Bobbi says, without hesitating.

Kate claps her hands in excitement. “I knew it!” The expression on her face makes Bobbi feel like she’s passed some sort of test, which is kind of presumptuous on Kate’s part, but it comes from a good place, so she lets it go.

“That's what she says _now_ ,” says a vaguely familiar voice in the hallway. Bobbi sits the rest of the way up, and she can see a group of Kate’s friends waiting out in the hallway. “She would have said the same thing to Bla—”

“You're a filthy liar, Billy Kaplan,” Kate shoots back. That’s right, now she remembers who he is. “I’ve been a Hawkingbird fan from the day you met me, and you know it.”

“Katie.” Clint rubs his eyes. “As nice as it is that you’re happy for me, why are you and your friends in my bedroom at whatever time it is—”

“Eleven fifty-four in the morning,” says another of Kate’s friends, a girl Bobbi definitely does not recognize. 

“Eleven fifty-four in the morning, thank you, America.”

Kate shoves her phone into Clint’s hand. “You're trending!” At his blank look, she explains, “Some story about you guys going berserk and blowing up a whole bunch of donuts is all over the internet, and they're having a field day with it. Look!” She points again to her phone, which shows a feed with results for the hashtag #AvengersVsDonuts.

Clint pulls down the screen to refresh, and a new image pops up. It's a meme with a picture of Clint in his classic costume on the right and some text on the left. Bobbi leans over his shoulder and reads it out loud. “ _['He protec, he attac, but most importantly... he vanquish fried snac'](https://imgur.com/a/PIQXi)_? What does this mean?” But the Young Avengers are laughing too hard to answer. “Why is it spelled all wrong?”

Clint shrugs, just as clueless, while Teddy clutches his side and leans against the doorframe for support, and Kate literally wails in laughter. “I think it's part of the joke, like that dog meme?” he guesses. “The ‘so wow’ one?”

“Oh my God,” America says. “This is the best thing that's ever happened.”

Billy wipes his eyes. “I never realized how _old_ you guys were.”

“Well, yeah,” says Bobbi. “I remember when you were in diapers.”

Kate stops laughing. “Wait, what?”

“Although that was only, what, eight years ago for me? And I think the ‘you’ that was you is not the same ‘you’ that you are.”

“Oh, this is a Scarlet Witch thing.” Kate nods and turns to America. “It’s a Scarlet Witch thing.”

“Of course,” America says, unruffled.

“So what’s the real story?” Kate asks. “With the donuts?”

Bobbi tells them. 

“That’s the dumbest thing I've ever heard,” Kate says. “No wonder no one's taking it seriously.”

“People could have died,” Clint insists.

“Oh, yeah, all those trans fats.”

“Deadly virus,” he counters.

Bobbi can see some muscles in his jaw start to tighten. “Let it go, Kate,” she warns, “he's about to go all Hawkeye on you.”

Kate raises an eyebrow. “What exactly does it mean to go all Hawkeye on someone?”

“Ha! Ask Captain America.” And with that, she curls back up into bed and pulls the blanket around her.

 

 

After she and James wear each other out, Natasha sleeps most of the day away. When she wakes up, she realizes she’s starving, and once the six of them plus Coulson are all awake, they gather together for a late lunch/early dinner on the Avengers’ dime.

“So, Fury's kicking us out of the safe house,” Daisy tells them. “Now that we're back in the public eye.”

“That’s a shame,” Rhodey says. “Maybe we can buy that place off of him and open up the Philly Avengers branch.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “We're going to run an Avengers team out of an apartment, are we?”

“Wouldn't be the first time,” Clint mutters.

Rhodey waves off the concern. “I’m sure the neighbors won't mind having to rebuild every week.”

“Have any of us even seen any of the neighbors?” Bobbi wonders out loud.

Natasha shrugs. “You mean, seen and be seen, or...? I might have scoped out the building a bit before going inside for the first time.”

“What's he going to do about the double agent?” James asks, changing the subject back to Fury.

“Drop ‘em off a cliff, I assume,” Daisy says with a shrug.

Steve and Tony come into the room then.

“What's going on?” Clint asks, looking up at them. 

Steve sits down in an empty seat at the head of the table. “We wanted to be the first to warn you that the news coverage of this morning’s events is...not very complimentary,” he says, jumping right into it. “To be frank: people are saying that the Avengers faked the scare in order to discredit A.I.M., and that we made up the donuts thing when we were caught in the lie.”

“‘We,’ huh?” Bobbi winces. “That's my bad. I never should have claimed to represent the Avengers.”

“Honestly, with all the different Avengers teams these days and the number of people on each team, it hardly matters,” Tony says. “But your names, the five of you specifically, are attached to this, and it's kind of a storm out there.”

“We want to offer you all a place in the Tower and on the team until the gossip dies down,” Steve continues. “I'm sure it'll blow over within the week, but in the meantime, you don't want to face all that. If any Avengers-related emergencies come up, you'll be expected to contribute, but otherwise I recommend staying indoors.”

“Just until it all blows over,” Tony repeats. “And in case that sounded like an order, you're not _required_ to stay indoors. It just... might be better for your blood pressure.”

Steve turns to Daisy. “And Daisy, the offer is open to you, too, even though your name hasn’t been associated with this event.”

“You mean, because nobody knows who I am in the first place.” Daisy’s mouth quirks into a grin. “Well, I’ve got nowhere better to be for the time being.”

It’s a nice offer, although Natasha wonders if they’re going about this all the wrong way. They did save the city; there’s no reason that their names should be smeared for it. They should be getting out there, reminding the people who they are and what they do for them, day in and day out.

After they finish eating, Coulson gets ready to leave. He has a job to get back to, after all, and his boss doesn't know what he's been up to.

“I'll talk to Director Hill,” he says. “Try to keep her off your back, see if we can help out with the media mess.” He puts on his jacket, and then looks down at himself and frowns. 

“Here you go,” Daisy says, handing him the weapons that Natasha had confiscated a few days ago.

“Yes, I'll need those.” He takes them from her one at a time, tucking the gun away in its belt holster, then strapping one knife to his arm and the other to his leg, by his ankle. When he’s done, he stands up again and looks around at them. “Okay. I think that’s it.”

Bobbi clears her throat. “Um. I, uh.... Sorry I pulled a gun on you and threatened to kill you and... everything.”

“No harm done,” he says, with a wry smile. “Take care of yourself. That goes for the rest of you, too.”

 

 

They spend the next several days holed up in the Tower, waiting out the media storm as per Steve and Tony’s suggestion. Natasha divides her time between catching up on Avengers business, napping, emotionally supporting James through his first-ever Friends marathon, and trying to convince Tony that going public with his anti-brainwashing tech is the key to turning this all around.

It’ll take public attention off of the A.I.M. story and onto something new, and this is technology that needs to go into circulation. It’s kept her safe, and it could protect so many others, not to mention the public, who would benefit by proxy from having its superheroes in control of their own minds.

Tony caves much more easily than she’s expecting, possibly because he’d already let go of the idea of total secrecy when he’d given her doses for the rest of the team. As she’d suspected, he’s livid when he hears about the Reverie protocol, and they have to talk him out of flying out and attacking the helicarrier all by himself—fortunately, Natasha manages to convince him that some public passive-aggressive jabs might be more effective than a direct confrontation.

And that’s what leads them here, to the backstage area of Fact Channel News, waiting for their live-audience interview with reporter Natalie Long. Natalie is the public face of the network, with a reputation for doing her homework and asking hard-hitting questions.

Natasha, Tony, and Bobbi are being interviewed, as the three of them will be heading the project at Stark Industries. They met with Natalie briefly when they arrived, right before being separated for hair and makeup. Now they’re announced, and the stagehands shoo them out to the stage.

They sit down to tentative clapping from the audience, and Natalie warms them up with some jokes and small talk. Then she gets serious.

“So, you’re here to talk about an issue that’s been plaguing the hero community for a while,” she says.

“That’s right,” Tony says.

“Mind control.”

There’s light laughter from the audience, but Tony nods again. “That’s right.”

“Okay, then,” Natalie says. “Tell us about mind control.”

“It’s hard to explain, I think, to someone who’s never had it happen to them,” Tony says. “You always think, ‘If that happened to me, I’d fight it. I’d beat it.’”

“Like in Harry Potter,” Bobbi says. “You have the Imperius Curse, but—is this considered a spoiler? It’s in the fourth book.”

Natalie looks at the audience. “Anyone here not read the books?” There’s assorted laughter, and she turns back to Bobbi. “I think we’re safe. Go ahead.”

“That’s what it does, it forces you to do whatever the spell-caster wants you to do, it’s considered an unforgivable curse, one of the most dangerous spells in the world, but Harry, he’s a stubborn kid, and he’s able to throw it off the first time he encounters it, just by force of will. It’s not always like that in real life.”

“Exactly, exactly,” Tony says. He shifts in his seat, becoming more animated. “Well, there are different types of mind control and mental manipulation, different strategies for dealing with some—I mean, most telepaths can create telepathic blocks which can protect them from other telepaths, but not necessarily from mind-altering technology. For example.”

“And if you can’t anticipate the exact type of attack that’s likely to come at you, you can’t prepare for it,” Natasha adds. “Over the years, this type of warfare has been used on so many of us, myself included. The damage inflicted by mind-controlled superheroes is not insignificant, and while it’s easy to argue that, ‘Hey, it’s not my fault, I wasn’t myself at the time,’ it doesn’t bring much peace to the victims, or, when the worst happens, their families.”

The mood in the studio is serious, now. There’s dead silence in the audience, everyone sitting on the edges of their seats.

Tony continues. “If I read you a list of all the Avengers who’ve had to fight off mind-control in just the past six months, you wouldn’t sleep for a week. Mockingbird herself here,” he pats her armrest, “was recently brainwashed by a certain terrorist organization we can’t name because we’re sure their lawyers are just _waiting_ to serve us a slander suit, and it took weeks of mental exercises for her to get completely back to normal.”

“So the whole ‘poisoned donuts’ thing we’ve been hearing about...” Natalie prompts.

Bobbi laughs. “That was true, I promise! I know it sounds silly, but we tested the donuts in our lab, and the results came out positive for a manufactured, very dangerous virus that could have become an epidemic.”

“You hear that, New York? Vindication for the Avengers!” The audience claps, and then she turns back to them. “So, I understand you’ve developed a solution for this.”

Natasha puts on an amicable smile, and describes the basics of the tech, just a general description without going into detail about passwords and encryption keys. “It’s really amazing, it is. We’ve tested it out in the field against telepaths, magic, technology, and it just works. Tony’s outdone himself this time.”

There are some cheers from the audience, and Tony puts up his hands in protest. “She’s being modest. I carried out the specs, but Black Widow was the one who came up with the idea, and we were equally involved in the design and architecture.” More applause from the crowd.

“That does sound impressive,” Natalie says. “Now, I know you said that this is a problem that superheroes have been dealing with. But do you see a need for something like this for the average person?”

Bobbi sits up in her seat. “What’s really important, in my opinion, is not necessarily for everyone to get this, but for it to be an option. You have these villains, sometimes they have superpowers, sometimes they use drugs or technology, and they think they can get inside your head and make you do what they want you to do. Once this is out there, once it becomes a real likelihood that you won’t be able to control anyone you see...it won’t be worth it anymore.”

“Think of it like a vaccine,” Natasha adds. “It creates, kind of, a technological version of antibodies to fight off an attack, and the more people who are immunized, the less able diseases are to spread.”

“So you’re pro-vaccines,” Natalie says, an impish grin across her face.

“I see what you did there.” Bobbi points with two hands, a _gotcha_ gesture. “Yes, we’re all pro-science and pro-vaccines. What can I say? They save lives.”

Natalie flips to the next cue card on her desk. She hesitates for a split second, then asks, “What about alcohol, drugs?”

Natasha and Bobbi glance at Tony and then at each other, and Bobbi fields the question. “Our intention here isn’t to police people’s personal activities, although of course we don’t endorse recreational drug use, legal or otherwise. The product doesn’t prevent people from getting drunk or high—am I allowed to talk about this on TV?” She covers her mouth like she’d accidentally let out a swear word, and Tony stage-laughs next to her. “It also wouldn’t interfere with medications like anti-anxiety pills, mood stabilizers, stimulants, antidepressants, and so on.”

“Actually,” Tony continues, in a guileless tone as if this isn’t a sensitive topic for him, “we’ve begun running tests to see if with slight adjustments, it can prevent certain side effects—like, memory loss or mood swings—that some medications can cause, without limiting the effectiveness of the drugs, of course.”

“That’s fascinating,” Natalie says. “But, you know, it also sounds a little scary. How would you respond to someone who was concerned about the amount of power it gives you, all these people’s minds basically in the hands of one person?”

“Honestly? I had the same concerns myself,” Tony admits. “Nat—Widow and I originally created this in response to a single event, for a single user, and we’ve only recently decided to go public with this because of increase in the number of mind control cases we’ve seen recently. I think, first of all, we can’t do nothing. The public relies on us to protect them from superhuman threats, and how can we fight off Galactus if we’re fighting ourselves?”

“Indeed.”

“But, of course, it’s not enough. And you’re right, we have to protect this tech itself against threats and even against any single person’s well-intentioned but subjective agenda. First of all, it’s all local. Once the tech is installed, there’s no way of accessing it remotely or hacking into it from the outside. What that means is that we need a very high level of quality control, lots and lots of testing before any new version is released, or a batch is produced, and very few and far-between updates. It’s not all in my hands alone, not anymore. We’ve taken on Mockingbird as a consultant due to her expertise in biology, and we have experts in quite a few different fields, to make sure nothing critical is overlooked. The software and the design are reviewed by an entire team, and it has to be approved by everyone before it goes out.”

“So you’re taking security seriously.”

“As a heart attack.”

“Well, I’m sure everyone watching this is both impressed and relieved. Thank you so much for coming on tonight.”

“No, thank you,” Tony says.

Natalie turns to her audience. “Tony Stark, everyone, the Invincible Iron Man himself. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. And Dr. Barbara ‘Bobbi’ Morse, Mockingbird.”

There’s standing applause as they walk offstage.

 

 

They watch the interview when it airs that evening, to see how it looks from the other side of the camera. Daisy’s got an open notebook on her lap and her phone in her hand, her attention split between the TV and phone so that she can find out what the public reaction is in real time. Afterwards, Tony clicks the screen off, and says, “I think that went well.”

“Let’s play it again to be sure,” Bobbi jokes, not that she’s been paying much attention. She’s lying down with her feet in Clint's lap and her head resting against Bucky's thigh, and Clint’s working the tension out of the soles of her feet with diligent fingers. Natasha is on Bucky's other side, leaning against him with his arm around her, and her hand plays absently with Bobbi's fanned-out hair. It's decadent, all this touching; Bobbi feels terribly spoiled and almost guilty with how much she loves it. The heel of Clint’s hand slides along the arch of one of her feet, pressing lightly, and she sighs in contentment.

“You four are obscene,” Sam comments. He's across the room in a wing chair, snacking from a half-empty bowl of pretzels on the end table next to him.

“Feeling left out? We can make room for you,” Natasha says in a teasing tone, running her fingers through a lock of Bobbi’s hair from root to tip.

“You can have a turn when I’m done,” Bobbi adds.

Sam throws a pretzel at her; it lands in her hair, and Natasha picks it out.

“In _public_ ,” he scolds. “With _children_ around,” indicating Daisy.

Daisy looks up from her phone, oblivious to the exchange. “Reception’s pretty favorable,” she announces. “No memes yet, anyway. People really like Natalie Long, so if she approves of you, that goes a long way.”

“Well, that’s a good first step,” Tony says. “Now we have to get working on production.”

“What kind of numbers do you have for that?” Rhodey asks.

They’re interrupted as Jarvis enters the room and leans over the couch where Tony and Rhodey are sitting. He speaks to Tony in a lowered voice. “Sir, we have the Iliad hovering over the tower and Director Hill requesting permission to land a helicopter on the roof.”

Bobbi tenses up instantly and swivels back upright. Maria Hill, now. She figured this would happen sooner or later, but not _this_ soon. She must have started in their direction even before the interview aired.

“We can’t exactly say no, can we?” Tony asks rhetorically. “Tell her to go ahead, please, Jarvis.”

“Very good.”

Natasha stands up, hands on her hips, with Daisy following suit, but Bobbi hesitates.

“You okay, Birdie?” Clint asks. “You don’t need to go see her. We can hide you behind that curtain over there. Pretend you’re in the shower.”

She smiles. “No, might as well get it over with. I’ll leave my weapons down here, though, just in case.”

“Okay.” He cups her cheeks with his hands a gives her a soft kiss on the lips. “Do you need me there? Because if not, it might be a better idea for me to stay inside. If I see her, I'll probably react the way that you reacted to Coulson... and she's not nearly as forgiving.”

Bobbi looks at Natasha and Daisy—former leader of the Avengers and youngest-ever level ten S.H.I.E.L.D. agent—and feels secure in the knowledge that they’ve got her back. “It’s fine,” she tells Clint. “We’ll pretend you’re in the shower.”

“Well, I have no interest in anything S.H.I.E.L.D. has to say at the moment,” says Rhodey.

“Send Maria my best,” Tony says irreverently, and Rhodey smacks him on the arm.

They take the elevator to the roof and step out into the night. Maria stands next to a helicopter, waiting for them, as the wind whips all around them, loud and powerful and biting. Bobbi pulls her jacket tightly around her, as if it can protect her from more than just the cold.

Maria’s wearing a tac suit which probably protects her from the cold, but she has no gloves, and she’s blowing on her hands to warm them up when they come out, stopping once she catches sight of them.

It’s like a high school movie as the three of them approach her, all in a row with Bobbi in the middle, like she’s the head cheerleader and they’re confronting someone who’s stepped out of line.

“So,” Maria says, as they stop in front of her.

“So,” Bobbi echoes.

Maria pulls her shoulders back and exhales a cloud of water vapor. “You could have exposed S.H.I.E.L.D. on that interview, but you didn't.”

“Well, don't thank me,” Bobbi says. “I'm still not sure it was the right decision.”

“I see.” Maria falls silent, looking over their heads at the glittering New York skyline. All around them, the city's lights dazzle like a disco ball, but at this height, if they look straight up, they can almost see the stars.

After a few seconds, Natasha asks, “So, are we done here, or...?”

“You should know,” Maria starts in a heated tone, then she lowers her voice and starts again, looking at Bobbi. “You should know that I spent a significant amount of time and resources trying to make sure you were safe, and would it have killed you to drop me a—” Bobbi folds her arms over her chest and takes a step forward, and Maria cuts herself off in the middle of the sentence. “Okay, that came out wrong. What I'm trying to say is, I was worried about you.”

“Well. Here I am.” She feels like she’s being petty. The proper response to ‘I was worried about you’ is ‘thank you,’ but she just can’t bring herself to say it.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Maria says. “I regret the circumstances, but if I had to do it all over again, I would make the same call.”

Daisy pipes up, her voice laced with impertinent mischief. “Including erasing Agents Barton’s and Rhodes’s memories of the Secret Avengers when they quit?”

Maria crosses her arms and looks away. “Maybe not,” she admits. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. The way the two of you,” she nods at Bobbi and Natasha, “shifted the media conversation, turned mental manipulation into the hot-button issue of the day... we won’t be able to use tactics like these anymore. No one will go along with it.”

“Good,” Natasha says.

There’s another awkward silence, and Maria looks between the three of them. Finally, she presses her fingers to her temple, winces, and sighs. “I know you all think I’m a villain, but I’ve never wished harm on any of you.”

Daisy coughs loudly into her palm.

“Well, rarely,” Maria amends.

“Likewise,” says Daisy, which gets a snort and half a smile out of her.

“That’s all, really. I wanted to...set things straight. And see for myself that you were alive,” she says to Bobbi.

“Thank you.” She can say it now, somehow, and even mean it.

They turn to go, and as they do, Maria gets in one last remark. “Agent Romanoff, you surprised me.”

“I guess I did.” A smile plays at the corner of Natasha’s lips. “I surprised myself, too.” Bobbi feels Natasha’s hand clasp hers, and she squeezes back. “See you around, Maria.”

Bobbi grabs hold of Daisy’s hand with her free one, and the three of them walk, hand in hand, back into the Tower.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's coming up next in this series? The smutty one-shots I promised you, as well as a fluffy domestic piece set during the team's convalescence at the Avengers Tower. It'll probably be a few weeks before the next work comes out, so if you're interested, I recommend subscribing either to the series or to me as a user. And if you've been following this story, I'd love to hear your thoughts now that it's complete!


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